Hogwarts Retold: Chamber of Secrets
by MelasZepheos
Summary: Lily, Lisa and Sally are back for another year of Hogwarts, another year of intrigue, mystery, and the occasional food fight!
1. Chapter 1

**AN:-** Hogwarts Retold. We're back again. Hopefully a few less mistakes, hopefully a little more characterisation, hopefully a little more drama.

**Chapter One: Back to School**

"I'm not sure about this Lily."

Selene Moon wasn't usually a nervous woman, but her daughter was pushing her comfort zone pretty far. They had spent the day in London, going in and out of muggle shops buying clothing, and now they were standing outside the London Underground, staring at the escalators as they carried the muggles up and down.

"Come on," Lily said, nudging her mother with her elbow, "it'll be an adventure."

"That's what got me out into the muggle world in the first place," her mother grumbled.

"And you've had fun, admit it."

Lily's friends thought that she could give a good disapproving eyebrow, but it was nothing on her mother. A solitary black line arched towards her hairline and she gazed down at Lily with a look that would have made McGonagall proud. "I have had a day," she said quietly, "and I am glad I spent it with you," she held up the shopping bags she was laden with, "I only wish it hadn't involved quite so much, ah, denim."

"I like denim," Lily said defensively, "it's the first muggle clothing Lisa and Sally got me, so I want to wear it all the time."

"Of course dear." Selene took a deep breath and stepped forwards onto the moving staircase, Lily following with a big smile on her face.

After several seconds when the tension was visible in her mother's shoulders the older woman relax, "it's not unlike Dumbledore's office." Selene said.

"How so?"

"Oh, have you not been to Dumbledore's office yet?" Selene looked back with a smile lighting her face, "he has a marvellous moving staircase that leads you right to his door."

"Of course I haven't been to Dumbledore's office, only the real troublemakers get sent there," Lily's eyes widened, "when did you get sent to Dumbledore's office?"

All she got in return was a light and airy laugh, and then they were stepping off and approaching the ticket gates.

Despite her mother's reticence, she proved to be remarkably capable when it came to working the machines, and they were soon on the other side. "I've seen some of our people get so confused," she said, settling herself into a seat, "they don't understand the money, or the electronic things. As if the money could be confusing, it has the numbers printed on the top for you to read!" She laughed again, and Lily smiled as well. She loved hearing her mother laugh, it sounded so carefree, so different to how she normally was.

Her mother had an important deadline approaching for her next book to be published. _The Adventures of Alec Thorne_ were being adapted into a radio play, and her publishers wanted the new book to be released at the same time as the play. For most of the summer holidays Selene had locked herself away in the attic, where she did her best writing. Her father was fun as well, but not in the same way that her mother could be. He was a lot more grounded, and his own work took up a lot of his time. Nimbus had recently released the Two Thousand and One series, and his office had been involved in putting them together, weaving spells into the woodwork.

At the very least they hadn't had to spend any time with the Malfoy's or the Greengrasses. When the invitation to the traditional family summer celebration had arrived, her parents had politely RSVPed in the resoundingly negative, citing work commitments. Of course, on the actual day they had taken Lily to the seaside and spent a day enjoying the sun, but the Malfoys weren't to know.

Normally they would have been invited round several times, but for some reason that hadn't been the case this year. Lily wondered if maybe Draco had told his father about her friends, and Lucius had decided to give up on the whole family for good. Not that anyone of the Moons minded, they were quite happy with their cosy little house on the outskirts of Trowse, spending their days doing what the Moons did best, reading big books of magic and having quiet nights out in the village.

Lily missed her friends very badly though, and she did sometimes wish that she had been able to spend more time with them, even if they were a little mad at times. They had managed to meet up for a week at the beginning of the holiday, staying round Lisa's house, but then Sally's family had been off to Seychelles for a fortnight, and after that Lisa was visiting her grandparents, and between one thing and another it had reached the end of August and they had hardly even managed to write.

She tried hard not to be paranoid, but it was in her nature. She was the odd-one-out in their little group, the Slytherin who had turned her back on her house to be friends with the Ravenclaw and the Hufflepuff. Part of her, a tiny little voice at the back of her head, wondered if Sally and Lisa had decided that it was too much effort to be friends with her. It was sometimes quite hard to ignore that little voice.

"What's wrong darling?" Her mother's voice broke into her thoughts, bringing her back to the present, where they were sitting on the train as it rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the tracks.

"I'm just thinking about my friends." She said, forcing a smile.

"You're worried they're not your friends anymore," her mother had the uncanny ability to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Her father often said it was the reason he had wanted to marry her.

Lily squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, "maybe a little."

"You have nothing to worry about." Selene said matter-of-factly, leaning back in her seat and looking out of the window, "you'll see when you get back to Hogwarts, they'll still be there, and you'll still be friends."

"How can you be sure?"

"Oh please darling," her mother's smile was kind and comforting, "I saw the three of you together at Christmas, and the amount you talk about them? If they feel even half as much as you do then they'll still be your friends."

Their stop arrived and Selene led the way once more through the crowded station until they were standing out in the warm August sunshine. "So I take it you have plans to meet up with them when the letters arrive?"

Lily nodded, "in the Leaky Cauldron."

"Well then, you'll see them soon enough, the letters should be arriving tomorrow, if my sources are accurate."

"Your sources being Mrs McClelland from the Ministry."

"You take your information where you can find it, ah! Here we are," and she hurried across the street into the Leaky Cauldron, nodding to the bartender and heading for the fire.

"Okay darling, you first."

Lily pulled her little pouch of floo powder out of an inside pocket and threw it onto the fire, stepping into the green flames and intoning clearly, "Vincent's Folly."

Every wizarding house had to have a name; otherwise it couldn't be reliably connected to the floo network. When they had moved in her father had chosen the name before her mother could object, and it had stuck. Lily whirled in the fireplace for a few seconds before her living room came into view and she stumbled forwards onto the mat that had been carefully laid down to catch any stray ash. Her father looked up from his newspaper and smiled, "hello Lily, was it a good trip?"

She held up her arms to display the bags strung along them and nodded, "it was great fun."

A moment later her mother was unfolding herself from the fireplace, brushing a stray fleck of coal dust from her shoulder. Lily still didn't know how her parents were able to emerge from a floo trip looking neat and presentable; she supposed it just took lots of practice. Selene deposited her own bags onto Lily and smiled, "well, go on, up to your room."

Staggering under the added weight, Lily made her way up the stairs to her bedroom, right at the far end of the house. Kicking open the door she heaved the bags onto one end of her bed and flopped down next to them.

Her room was a wild mix of tastes and styles, none of them quite overlapping. The general theme seemed to be books and the storing thereof but here and there flashes of something else poked through. On one bookshelf her small collection of stuffed toys stood guard over the children's books within, looking out at her with their button eyes, while on another shelf her school textbooks stood in regimented rows, a scarf and tie laid out neatly beside them.

Her room was, and always had been, painted pale grey, but recently touches of pink had crept in courtesy of her friend Sally. Having seen the explosion of pink and red that was Sally's room Lily supposed she should have been grateful that it was only a splash or two of colour from presents instead of every wall and surface. Her gifts from Lisa were a little more conservative, and mostly lived in her closet. She had never even heard of denim before going to Hogwarts, and now it was all she wore.

Next to her bed was the stack of books she was reading. Two textbooks and two fictions. The textbooks were for Potions and Transfiguration, which were Lily's weakest subjects at school, and the fiction books were both muggle books that Sally's mother had recommended for her. She had quite enjoyed the Jill Murphy books, even if they had obviously been meant for children. They were a pretty unnerving reflection of her own experiences sometimes.

And soon she would be going back there. Smiling happily she pulled open one of her bedside drawers to examine her wand, which had been sitting untouched for most of the summer. It wasn't that she didn't want to use it, because if she had her way she would have been casting spells from dusk until dawn¸ but the letters were pretty clear. No using magic outside of Hogwarts, even if you were from an all magical family that used magic on a daily basis and was never visible by muggles.

When she had gone round to Lisa's the year before, her mother had thrown up all sorts of defences, and they had been able to practice some magic over Christmas. Thinking about that now, and all the times they had been able to sit outside Hogwarts charming whatever caught their eye; Lily sighed and wished the days could go faster. Resisting temptation had been easy at the start of the holidays, but now she was opening the drawer several times a day, waiting for the time when she could take her wand out again.

Shutting it again, she emptied the bags onto her bed and started piling her new clothes into her trunk, which was standing open again waiting for the start of term. Smiling, she folded t-shirts and packed them in around the robes that were already here. It was less than two weeks until they went back now, and she couldn't wait.

* * *

Sure enough, when she went down to breakfast the next day there was a letter sitting at her place at the table, the elegant green writing and bright red wax stamp telling her exactly where it had arrived from. She almost tore the letter inside in her excitement to get it open, and scanned the list of new books hungrily. Her mother pushed a plate of toast over which she ate absently while turning the parchment over in her hand.

"We're getting all of Gilderoy Lockhart's books this year," she said, frowning. Her mother knew Gilderoy, they shared a publisher, and none of their conversations about the man had ever been complimentary.

"That old loon?" Vincent looked up, "I suppose your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan." He muttered something else that sounded suspiciously like, "probably a woman," and Selene whapped him round the head with her copy of the Daily Prophet.

"What was that darling?" She asked cordially.

"Nothing dearest," he said with a very fake smile, turning back to his notebook, which he had been doodling in for most of the last week. There were new contracts coming in and he needed to start planning runes and formulae.

"All of Gilderoy Lockhart's book?" Selene took the letter and examined it, her eyes widening, "well then, all of Gilderoy Lockhart's books." She gave Lily the letter back, "anything else?"

"Standard Book of Spells Grade Two, but nothing else."

"And they're still teaching from that ancient piece of nonsense." Apparently her father was in the mood for a good grumble, and nothing was going to deter him.

"Why is it nonsense?" Lily asked curiously.

"Well all the spells it teaches," he started waving his quill to emphasise his point, "You don't need spells like _Alohamora_, but _Aguamenti_? That's a useful spell, and they don't start teaching it to you until second year!" He shook his head, "outdated nonsense."

Lily bit her lip and reminded herself that her parents didn't know about her experiments with older year magic. She had in fact been practicing _Aguamenti_ since before last Christmas, and had even used it to shoot a burst of water into Pansy Parkinson's face. And her friends loved her _Lapifors _charm, which could turn everyday objects into rabbits, no matter how briefly.

The problem was that the Slytherin Common Room wasn't very well monitored by Professor Snape. So when an older year left their book lying around, or just didn't need it anymore, those books could very easily end up on one of the communal bookshelves, instead of taken back to the library where it belonged. So Lily had taken to browsing the shelves for books that would teach her interesting spells. Sometimes they worked, most times they didn't, but she was acutely aware that she had no business even attempting them.

Her parents were still talking, "Hogwarts has been teaching students for millennia," her mother was saying, "it's the best school in the country."

"It's the _only_ school in the country," her father responded darkly.

Sensing the beginnings of a parent argument, Lily bolted the rest of her breakfast and tugged her mother's sleeve, "so are we going to Diagon Alley today?"

"Have you organised it with your friends?"

"Well we said we'd all go together on the day that the letters came out, and the letters have come out."

"Very well," Selene rose gracefully from the table and made her way towards the stairs to get ready, shooting her husband a look as she left, "this isn't over yet," She warned him.

After she had gone Vincent smiled at Lily, "will I be coming along as well?" He asked.

She nodded, "mother will need someone to talk to while the three of us go off on our own."

"Of course," he nodded, "independence is good for you, and a trip to the Leaky Cauldron is always good for me." He stood as well, stretching some of the kinks out of his back, "well, let me just go and get changed."

She smiled at that. Ever since her friends had introduced her to the delights of muggle clothing, she had then done the same for her parents. In the past they had only ever worn muggle clothing when they went into the small village they lived in, usually only at Christmas or Easter, and their clothes were stiff and formal. The rest of the time they had worn traditional robes. Now her father was never happier than when he had an excuse to wear his favourite checked jumper, a dark silver and green thing with no sleeves. She didn't know why, but whenever he wore it Lily felt automatically embarrassed. She didn't know much about muggles, but she gathered that it was not good when your dad dressed in one of those.

She went back upstairs as well, clutching the book list tightly in one hand and grinning like an idiot. She didn't even care that she was going to be forced to buy and read Lockhart's entire collected works, she was going back to Hogwarts again, and she was going to see her friends.

Diving into her drawers, she finally took her wand out of its resting place, her fingers closing round the handle and feeling warmth surge into her arm, like the wand had just been waiting for her to finally come back to it. She almost flicked it right then and did something, anything, that would remind her of the incredible things it could do, but she managed to restrain herself, instead sliding the wand into an inside pocket before heading back onto the landing.

But she could have sworn that she felt something from the wand as it settled against her chest, something that felt very much like someone whispering _soon._

**AN:-** First things first, The Adventures of Alec Thorne, Bite and Barnabus Stump are all copyright me, so no taking them or the stories attached to them. Alex Thorne is kind of like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, and is one of my oldest story ideas.

Ilike Selene Moon, especially her interactions with Lily. What I wanted to try and bring across is that Selene and Vincnt have always treated her like an adult, which is why she is (for the moment) a lot more mature than some of the other students.

A 'folly' is the name of a buildling that has no purpose other than as an ornament, but also are often eccentric in design or construction. Vincent knew that leaving the protective fold of the old family money was a foolish idea, so when he had to come up with a name for the new house he was living in, he chose 'Vincent's Folly' a sort of derogatory dig at himself for being a bit of an idiot.

I couldn't think of a good way for the girls to like Gilderoy Lockhart. Lily's mum is a writer, so of course she would know of Lockhart, even if she didn't know him personally, and that would transfer onto Lily. My parents often talk about people that they work with, or know through their work, and because of the nature of my father's work this sometimes means relatively well known people. Most hilariously, it recently involved a man who was suspected of wrongdoing in the News of the World trials over here in Britain. Some other people (I'm trying hard to keep this as anonymous as possible) thought that this man was well worth the money and a good consultant, but my father had always said that he absolutely hated the man, and thought he was a slimy scumbag. Turns out my dad was right.

My little dig not so much at the books but more the videogames. You get to learn absolutely useless spells with only one very specific application early on, but multi-purpose spells like aguamenti or accio get held back for as long as possible.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:- **Back again. I've got quite a bit more of this written, but I'm staggering updates just in case I have to stop writing for any reason

**Chapter Two: Diagon Alley**

"Lily!" It was a shout that could be heard halfway across Diagon Alley, and more than a few heads turned to the source of the noise. "Lily Lily Lily Lily Lily!"

Sally thudded into Lily hard enough to knock her backwards into a wall, squeezing her tightly round the middle, "Lily!"

"Hello, urk! Sally!" Lily tried to pry herself loose but Sally was stuck tight around her middle.

There was a sound of footsteps nearby and someone's amused voice reached them, "it's nice to see you."

Lily looked up from the golden blonde mane that was pressing against her neck and smiled as she saw Lisa smiling at them. "Can you detach her?"

"Sorry, I was stuck for twenty minutes when she first saw me."

Sally backed away and stuck her tongue out at Lisa, "it was not twenty minutes."

"Alright, twenty-one," Lisa and Lily hugged before Lisa turned to Lily's parents, who had been watching the goings on with amused smiles, "it's nice to see you again Mr and Mrs Moon." She said, holding out her hand.

Selene and Vincent shook her hand and smiled to the girls, "I suppose your parents are around somewhere?"

"I think they're in the Leaky Cauldron by now," Lisa said.

"Well we shall join them for a drink," Selene linked arms with her husband; "you girls have fun, and be careful."

"We will." Lily waved her parents off, then turned to her friends, "right, where first?"

Where first was Gringotts, where Lily and Lisa got out enough money to pay for all of their books, and then the girls made their way to Slug and Jiggers, where they spent the briefest amount of time possible buying their potions ingredients. It was a relief to get back out into the open air, and they hurried along to Madame Malkin's to get Sally a new cloak. While they were there they met Hannah Abbot, one of the girls in Sally's house, and the two of them had a spirited talk about whether the curtains on their beds would have been changed. As far as Lisa and Lily could figure out, the girls of Hufflepuff thought their current curtains were ugly, and had asked to have them changed for their second year.

"I can't believe you care that much about them," Lily said as they went next door to Amanuensis Quills.

"Well aren't there things you want to change about your dorm?" Sally asked.

"Given that my dorm is a slimy pit under the lake that goes pitch black every night and it's filled with people I don't like?"

"Sorry, I forgot."

"Don't worry about it."

In Amaneunsis' they each bought a set of new quills and ink to go with it, and after tearing Lisa away from the specialist quills Sally took them over to Florean Fortesque's. "We deserve a little break," she said, buying sundaes for the three of them.

"We've only been to three shops." Lisa pointed out, not exactly complaining.

"Yes, but have you seen the queue outside Flourish and Blotts?" Sally took an extra-large spoonful, "we need to prepare ourselves." She chomped down on the spoon and almost immediately grabbed her head, "Ah! Brain freeze!"

As the Hufflepuff girl moaned in agony the other two smiled at each other and got started on their own ice-creams.

"So was your summer a constant round of visits to relatives you don't like?" Lisa asked.

"Not so much actually. My mother has a new book coming out and my father has been working pretty hard as well."

"Which book is coming out?" Once she had found out that Lily's mother was a writer she had insisted on reading everything that she had ever written, including the very embarrassing first novel that had bought recognition to the Moons.

"Alec Thorne."

"And when's the next _Bite_ coming out?"

Lily laughed out loud at that, "I think you must be the only person I know who actually likes those books."

_Bite _had been Selene's big hit, a truly atrocious tale about a young witch falling in love with a werewolf, who was too noble to be with her because if he lost control even for a moment she would become like him. Her mother was still obliged to turn out a new novel about the pair every few years, even though writing them made her cringe.

"There's just something about them," Lisa said defensively, "I can't help but like them."

"The new one is due next year, after she's put out the Alec Thorne and finished her contributions for this textbook."

"Oh, my mum's been drafted to help on that one."

Sally had gotten her sore head under control, "what's it about?"

"Defensive magic, easy to make healing potions for people without access to hospitals," Lily ticked off on her fingers, "and a brief history of dark wizards in the twentieth century. Everything a young auror could need."

"Wow, it must be so weird that both your mums are working on the same book."

"You do know they don't actually need to see each other while they're working right?" Lisa asked, "mostly my mum just writes it in the evenings when she gets off work."

"Yeah, but I like to imagine they all have to meet in secret and have like, secret handshakes so that no dark wizards can infiltrate their meetings and learn their secrets."

Lily and Lisa exchanged a look, wondering which of them would have to ask the inevitable question. Eventually Lily sighed and went for it, "huh?"

"Well Quirrel last year was evil, and he tried to kill Harry Potter, so I did some reading into dark wizards over the holiday, and that Voldemort one…" she trailed off as Lily and Lisa both flinched, accidentally knocking the table, "what?"

"We don't say that name." Lisa said delicately.

"What, Voldemort?"

They flinched again.

"Yeah, that one."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't really want to remember what happened back then."

"But none of us were even alive back then," Sally said, frowning deeply.

"Wizards in general don't want to remember."

"Oh," she seemed to accept the explanation and went on anyway, "so I was reading this book that said that some of His supporters were still out there, or at least that some people though they were, so how do we know they aren't right here among us? They could have all sorts of secret meetings and we'd never even know about it."

Lily and Lisa stared at her, "you know," Lily said eventually, "sometimes I would like to live in your head, just for an hour, and see all the wonderful things you see."

As they made their way to Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment they were unfortunate enough to bump into Draco Malfoy, who was being led out of Knockturn Alley by his father. He sneered when he saw Lily, "still slumming with the muggles?" He asked her.

"Now now Draco," Lucius' voice had always been unpleasant, but Lily had forgotten quite how oily it could sound. The second he spoke she felt like she needed a shower. "Some people have chosen not to embrace the gifts their heritage could bring them, and we shouldn't jeer. It demeans you when you insult those who are beneath you after all."

Lisa and Sally both looked very much like they were about to say something, but Lily just bowed her head to Malfoy and dragged her two friends out of sight up the road.

"Why did you stop us?" Lisa asked when Lily finally let go.

"What good would it do?" She replied, "he's been making fun of my family for as long as I can remember, there's no point in trying to change it."

Sally was still looking back towards Knockturn Alley, her face puzzled, "why would he do something like that?" She asked, "he doesn't even know us, and he was still being mean."

"Because he's a mean person, now can we please keep shopping?"

They had a fun hour looking through the various curios on sale in Wiseacre's, but none of them could quite shake the uneasy feeling Lucius had given them, and they were quiet as they walked back through the alley towards Flourish and Blotts.

"The queue's got even bigger!" Sally said when they arrived, "what's going on?"

Lisa, being slightly taller than her friends, could just about look past a gaggle of middle aged witches to see the sign, "Gilderoy Lockhart in store today," she read quickly, before it was obscured again by a wild handbag. "We're actually going to meet him?" She said incredulously, "he's written the entire book list."

"Oh goody," Lily didn't even care that she sounded sarcastic.

"What's wrong with him?" Sally asked.

"He's under the same publisher as my mother," Lily explained, "she has… issues with him."

"My mum as well," Lisa said, "she doesn't like his books at all."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Well," the crowd moved and they were standing in front of a man-sized picture of a man's head, presumably Gilderoy Lockhart's. "My mum says that some of the things in his books don't add up. Like in _Wanderings with Werewolves_ he claims that he managed to cure a man of lycanthropy, but that should be impossible. She even got to ask him about it at a Defensive Magic convention, before he got really famous and only did book signings. She said his explanations left a lot to be desired."

"His publisher wouldn't publish lies though would they?" Sally asked, staring up into the looming smile.

"Well, maybe not lies, but exaggerations." They shuffled along a little bit more, and a big stack of books came into view. All of them bore another picture of his head and the title _Magical Me._

"Uhm, why has he written an autobiography?" Sally asked, "aren't all of his books kinda like autobiographies?"

Lisa snatched up a copy and read from the blurb, "apparently this one tells the 'inspiring true story of a rise from rags to riches of the most famous wizard of our time, and how his early experiences at Hogwarts and abroad helped shape him into the foremost expert on vanquishing dark magic in the modern age'." She snorted and dropped the book back onto the pile, "I wonder if a single word of that is true."

"We're almost inside now," Lily said quietly, "let's just get this over with quickly."

Looking ahead she could see the crowd of witches growing more excited, standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of someone at the front of the line, presumably Lockhart himself. She had to admit that she was curious to actually see him in person. Her mother had talked about him a lot, but he didn't do many public appearances, so she had never had a chance to see him in person.

There was much pushing and they finally managed to get inside the doors. Abandoning the queue Lily jumped up onto the staircase so she could get a good look as Gilderoy Lockhart strutted onto the stage.

Her first impression was that she was looking at a peacock that walked like a man. His robes were a forget-me-not blue and his hat was sitting lopsided on his perfectly coiffed hair. His smile showed far too many teeth to look comfortable and his quill was truly impressive, at least as long as his forearm. She felt her eyebrow rise of its own accord, and realised immediately why her mother didn't like the man at all.

She watched closely as he looked up and flashed a dazzling smile at the front row of witches, who gasped and waved at him. Even from her distant viewpoint she thought his chin looked like it was in danger of disappearing into his neck, but no one else seemed to care. The step next to her creaked and a bright orb of gold appeared next to her, "is that him?" Sally asked.

"Well either that or those witches are going to be disappointed."

"He looks quite nice doesn't he?" Sally asked, looking to her friend for confirmation.

"You really think so?" Lily frowned, "I mean, sure he's smiling and cheerful but he looks a bit…" she searched for an appropriate word, "fake?"

"I think his hair looks kind of like mine."

"Yes, but you're a girl."

"The other women seem to like him."

Lily chuckled, "yes, but they're all old."

"Should we get our books?"

"I suppose so; it's not really fair leaving Lisa in line on her own."

They dropped back down into the melee and got hold of three huge stacks of books, somehow managing to navigate their way over to Lisa, who took her own pile from them and nodded to the front, "looks like someone else is here as well."

They looked over to see Lockhart grabbing someone from the crowd and pulling him onto stage. Lily recognised the mop of black hair in an instant. Harry Potter stood awkwardly next to Gilderoy as the photographer snapped half a dozen photos, and then Lockhart's smile somehow managed to widen. While Lily wondered quite how she could see someone's wisdom teeth from twenty feet away he started talking.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" His voice carried all the way to the back of the shop. "What an extraordinary moment this is!"

"Does he have to shout everything?" Lisa deadpanned next to her, sending Lily into a mostly silent fit of giggles.

"The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time."

"Bet that got sore after a while." Lily muttered, making Lisa snort into the cover of _Year with a Yeti._

"When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography – which I shall be happy to present him now, free of charge." He paused, waiting for the crowd to applaud, which they dutifully did, "he had no _idea._" Lockhart shook harry hard enough that the boy's glasses nearly fell off. Lily wondered just how annoying it must be for Potter to have them sitting right on the tip of his nose. She knew from experience it was like having an itch you were completely unable to scratch.

"That he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, _Magical Me._" Another pause, another burst of clapping. Lily had to concede that he was a perfect showman, if nothing else. He knew exactly what to say and when to say it. "He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen." Lisa and Lily got it a second before everyone else, and exchanged a horrified look as he prattled on, "this September, I will be taking up the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

The crowd went wild with applause, the camera flashing and clicking while nearby a short woman with bright green glasses scribbled furiously in a notebook. He finally let Harry go, and the boy hurried off, looking thoroughly embarrassed Lockhart carried on bowing to the crowd, flashing his dazzling smile to everyone he could see. Eventually he sat back down again and the line started to move again.

"Are we really going to get our books autographed by the man himself?" Lisa asked as they shuffled along.

"I think we pay for them and drop out of the line before we reach the man himself." Lily suggested.

"Good plan."

The crowd shuffled forwards another two steps, the shop owner flitting about from customer to customer making sure they were fully loaded with everything Lockhart had ever written. The three girls were starting to struggle a little under the weight of their books, and it wasn't helped when someone shoved into them from behind.

"Hey!" Lily said, trying to turn around without losing control of her tower of books, "watch out!"

Whoever it was shoved again, forcing Lily out of the queue entirely. On the downside, this meant she found herself with the corner of a table jabbing into her stomach very uncomfortably. On the upside she had a perfect view as Lucius Malfoy was slammed into a bookcase by a balding red haired man. A huge smile split her face as the red headed man proceeded to thump Mr Malfoy in the face as hard as he could. A stray copy of the _Encyclopaedia of Toadstools _toppled from its shelf and caught Malfoy square in the eye.

Sadly, a huge figure had appeared behind them, saying in a loud and instantly recognisable voice, "Break it up there gents, break it up."

Hagrid seized both men by the collars and hauled the apart, holding them a good foot off the ground. Draco was standing nearby, and Lily was pleased to see that he looked absolutely stunned that his father was in such a state. She wanted to stay and watch what happened next, but Lisa and Sally had managed to make it round a corner, and she quickly slid back into the line next to them.

"What was that about?" Lisa asked.

"Someone was beating up Lucius Malfoy," Lily said, aware that she was still smiling broadly. "An encyclopaedia hit him in the eye."

"Good," said Lisa firmly, "he's a slimy git, just like his son."

"Where's the counter anyway?"

But they were too late, and suddenly the crowd shifted and they were standing in front of Lockhart's table. His smile turned on them like a fully charged _lumos_ and he waggled his quill at them. "I'm not going to be able to sign all of those books girls," he said in what he probably thought was a charming and jokey tone, "so how about a copy of _Magical Me_ each and I'll see you at school?"

Before they could protest he had scrawled across three copies of his autobiography and waved them along, beaming like an idiot the whole time.

"Great," Lisa said, turning _Magical Me_ over so she didn't have to look at Lockhart's face, "now we all have an extra book by that guy."

"I think he seems nice," Sally said, "lots of people smile because it's polite, I think he's really happy to be here."

"You always try and see the best in people," Lily mumbled."

"What?"

"Not everyone is as nice as you want to believe." She said a little louder, "sometimes people don't have soft gooey centres."

"Well you always see the bad parts of people." Sally said sanctimoniously. "Maybe if you look for good you'll find it, but if you keep looking for badness then that's all you'll find."

Lily wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, so she settled for dumping her books on the counter and forking over what felt like far too many galleons for the privilege.

They trotted back out into Diagon Alley with their backs bent under the weight of their purchases, and Lisa quite wisely suggested that they should go and find their parents. Sadly, once they got to the Leaky Cauldron Sally's parents announced that they had to be off to relieve their babysitter of the pressure of looking after Henry, Sally's hyperactive younger brother. The girls said their goodbyes, and Lily felt tears sting the edges of her eyes, wishing that they could have all gone straight to school right then and there.

"Hey," Sally said, giving her san extra tight hug, "see you in a week remember?"

Lily nodded, "see you at King's Cross."

**AN:-** Big news for this chapter, Lily found her sense of sarcasm!

I'm settling into the characters a bit more I think. Lisa is the straight man, Lily is the sarcastic one, and Sally is the excited one. For some reason they sort of turned into the cast of Friends. Lily is Chandler, Sally is halfway between Joey and Phoebe, and Lisa is Ross.

Bite is kind of a Twilight thing. Young pretty perfect Mary Sue witch falls in love with a tortured young mysterious wizard. It turns out he is a werewolf, and they fall in love. He is too honourable to do anything, but she insists and eventually they end up married. In the latest book they are about to have a child, and there is much angsting about whether or not it will be a werwolf as well. Selene hates the books, but she has to keep writing them.

The Voldemort thing. Of course Sally wouldn't know not to say his name. It didn't come up the year before, but the whole Quirrel thing would have made her look into it over the holiday, so...

Lucius and Draco have obviously just come from Borgin and Burkes. Sally and Lisa have never really seen up close how Lily is treated by the members of the pure-blood community. This is the first time they've seen the casual disdain that the pureblood community treats others with. I tried to write Lucius the way he was in the book, so I hope it's alright.

Like I say, I couldn't think of a single reason to have Lisa and Lily like Lockhart, and if there's one thing Sally knows, it's people.

Great fun having the girls MST3King Lockhart.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:-** In Chapter Three our intrepid heroes face the terrifying challenge of... eight hours locked in a small carriage with Sally! Alright, seriously there's one event in this chapter I am very very very uncertain of. Hopefully I have handled it reasonably, but I came very close to starting this chapter from scratch

**Chapter Three: The Hogwarts Express**

Fighting against the tide of students rushing up and down to try and find their own compartments, Lily, Lisa and Sally looked for somewhere that wasn't too full. Unfortunately it seemed like every single carriage already had students practically falling out of it as they struggled for seats.

Finally, at the very back of the train, they found a compartment that was completely empty, and staggered into it with sighs of relief, Lily and Lisa going straight to window seats and collapsing into them while Sally gently put her cat-box down on one of the seats. "Tabby really doesn't like crowds," she said softly as she did so, stretching her fingers into the box and rubbing the top of his forehead gently.

Lily and Lisa had never seen much of Sally's cat. It seemed like it sent most of its time either asleep on the end of Sally's bed or down in the kitchens being pampered by the House Elves. Right now he seemed more than content to inside the carrier and peer out at them with wide brown eyes. Sally sat down next to Lily and started to bounce one of her legs up and down, "we're going back to Hogwarts." She said excitedly.

"Yes we are," Lisa said, watching in amusement as the bouncing seemed to spread through Sally's entire body, until she was actually springing out of her seat on every alternate bounce. "And you seem very excited about it."

"Well I am very excited about it," Sally said matter-of-factly, "after all, it's back to magic and secret passages and house points and spending all day in the library reading and learning stuff."

"And all that late night sneaking around," Lily added, "can't forget that."

"Midnight broomstick ride tomorrow night anyone?" Lisa asked.

Sally shook her head vigorously, "I want to see Hatton as soon as possible."

Hatton was a portrait who lived on the seventh floor and concealed one of the girls' favourite secret passageways. It was a castle high water slide that deposited one in a different location every time. The first time they had been ejected into the lake, and after that had come out anywhere from the broomstick sheds to Greenhouse Two. Lisa had been tricked into finding it by a fifth year in her first month, and the three of them had been greeted by a small group of students who had all been tricked into it as first years.

Lily was looking forward to the day when she would be able to trick some poor first year into checking it out, but until then she would have to settle for riding the thing again. "I think we should see Hatton," she agreed, "then we start looking for new things to do."

"Like what?"

"Well Hogwarts is really old and really full of stuff, so why don't we just go exploring one day? Like go down to the dungeons and just see what we can find down there?"

"You want to go poking around in the dungeons?" Lisa asked in shock, "isn't that dangerous?"

Lily looked at her in amazement, "like sneaking around the seventh floor wasn't dangerous?"

Lisa went quiet at that, and Lily wished she hadn't said it. The year before Lisa had found out about a window that was supposed to show people the future if they looked into it. Lily and Sally hadn't wanted to look, but Lisa had gone anyway. The other two didn't know what she had seen, but whatever it was it had scared her badly.

Trying to recover the mood, Sally bounced a little closer to her friends across the seat, "how about we go exploring out in the grounds instead? Or in the library? We spend enough time in there anyway; I bet there's loads of cool stuff hidden there."

Lisa nodded, shaking herself a little to throw off the memory, "that sounds great, hey, did you get all your homework down?"

Of course, all their conversations eventually turned to homework. Apart from Hermione Granger, there was probably no one else in the year who cared quite so much about learning everything than Lisa. Not that Lily and Sally didn't get something out of it, Lisa was always willing to help them with their help, and she was better at Transfiguration than anyone they knew. Apart from Hermione.

Speaking of…

Hermione Granger wandered past their carriage, looking strangely lost without Harry Potter and the other one. Instead of standing up like she normally did she was hunched over, her head buried somewhere in her chest. Lily suppressed a sigh and pasted a fake smile on her face, trying to look like the bookish Gryffindor would be welcome to sit with them.

The others realised what she was trying to do, and Sally took over, practically pulling the girl onto the seat next to Tabby the cat, a huge and genuine smile on her face, "hey!" She said by way of greeting, "you're the really smart one aren't you? Don't you normally hang around with Harry Potter and, uh, the red-headed guy?"

"Ron," Hermione said quietly, "they're not on the train; I don't know where they've gone. I didn't see them on the platform either."

"Well it was busy out there," Sally carried on, "they're probably looking for you as well, 'cause that's what friends do."

She shot a look at Lisa and Lily, who were quick to nod along as if they had all been thinking the same thing.

"So," Lisa said, clearly scrabbling for a subject of conversation, "were all the rumours true last year?"

She had obviously said the wrong thing, Hermione closed off even more, crossing her arms and looking back out into the corridor. Sally gave her friend a reproachful glare and turned back to Hermione, "never mind," she said, "you don't want to talk about it. Hey!" She visibly brightened as a topic hit her, "homework!"

Hermione looked at the Hufflepuff like she was mad, but Lily and Lisa were experienced Sally translators after a year, and knew that she was asking if everyone had done the homework they had been set over the summer. Lily seized the opportunity, "I had no idea about the Transfiguration work," she said, "Lisa? Can you help?"

"Swap you for a Herbology problem," Lisa was already pulling a roll of parchment out of her bag, "What exactly are leaping toadstools used for?"

It was a pattern they had fallen into many times before. Lily was their resident Charms and Herbology expert, Lisa the Transfiguration genius, and Sally had a solid working knowledge of Astronomy. Between the three of them they were usually able to get through the piles of homework that they were given on a weekly basis. Most of their time in first year had been spent working their way through Snape's legendarily complicated tasks, or trying to interpret what Quirrel had been talking about underneath the stutter.

Obviously they hadn't been given any Defence homework over the holidays, but there had been more than enough from their other teachers to make up for it. Especially since, despite an early drive, Lily hadn't really thought about the stack until less than a month before they were due to come back. She went patiently through Sally's Charms essay, correcting spelling errors and drawing neat lines through some of the wilder assertions. Sally had a tendency to make things up when she couldn't find the actual information.

Lisa meanwhile was struggling with the Transfiguration work, "You got a different question to me," she said, "I'm not sure how much help I can be."

"Can I have a look?" Hermione asked, holding out a hand. At Lily's nod Lisa handed the work over and Hermione scanned it, alternately nodding and shaking her head as she went through each point, "you've tried to take on too much," she said absently, pulling a quill out from under her robes, "your points get really cluttered and you lose the point." She dipped her quill into the ink pot that had been balanced on Tabby's case and started to scribble over the parchment, "it's nothing serious, but Professor McGonagall marks for clarity as well as content, so you can lose a lot of marks if you're not clear."

Lisa and Lily exchanged a look, then watched as Hermione blew on the parchment and gave it another read through. The whole process had taken less than ten minutes. The second Hermione was done Lisa snatched the work back, scanning it again, "no way you could get all that in five minutes," she said, "and fixing it should take even longer."

Hermione shrugged, "try correcting Ronald Weasley's work, you get used to all sorts of craziness."

Sally, who was just finishing her review of Lily's work, looked up, "what about Harry Potter, I bet he's really good."

The reaction was a thin smile, "he's better off paper," she said, "he's brave and clever and a great friend."

"And on paper?" Lisa said slyly.

Hermione only held out her hand for Sally's Transfiguration work. Lisa was still looking through Lily's corrected work, looking more and more irritated as she got closer to the end. "Is it all alright?" Hermione asked.

"Yes," Lisa handed the work back to Lily, more than a little roughly, "it's perfect. How exactly did you do that?"

"Well the work was fine, so it was more just making sure everything was the right way round and the content was right."

Lisa was adamant, "you can't have possibly got all that in five minutes."

"Thank you, by the way," Lily gave the Ravenclaw a warning look, and Lisa closed her mouth tightly, with only a hint of a growl.

"You're welcome," Hermione went back to Sally's work, giving Lisa and Lily cover to have a furious telepathic best friends conversation.

_Be nice._

_She's insufferable._

_She's really smart._

_I'm really smart._

_Then you've got lots in common._

_Maybe you could try talking to her instead of about her? _Sally gave them both a look of exasperation and turned back to actually having a conversation with Hermione, who it turned out was a cat lover like Sally.

"I've always wanted a cat," Hermione was saying, "but I've never really had a chance. My parents have always said that owning a pet is a big responsibility because you have to take care of them properly."

"Well that's why Tabby is so great," Sally motioned to her snoozing pet, "he's always pretty much taken care of himself, as long as I give him food and water."

"But don't you get worried about him?"

"Well I know he'll always come back in the end. We found out last year he spent all his time in the kitchens, so he was happy enough at Hogwarts."

Hermione didn't quite look convinced, but she was staring at Tabby's basket with longing in her eyes.

* * *

The sun started to set as they crossed over steeps hills on the way further north. The food trolley had been round and they had all stocked up on their favourite brand of sweets. For Lisa it was liquorice wands, for Lily Chocolate Frogs, and for Sally it was Bertie Bott's every Flavour Beans. Lily couldn't quite understand her friend's love for them, especially since she herself had never had any of the fabled 'tasty' flavours. Hermione declined sweets, saying that when your parents were dentists you heard more horror stories about the dangers of sugar than you heard actual horror stories. She did however buy a few pumpkin pasties that were quickly added to the pile of food.

"Metal," Sally announced, chewing happily while Lily gagged in the corner, "how do they get all the different flavours?"

"Magic." Lisa said dryly.

"Well I know it's magic but what sort of magic? What spell do you use to give things different tastes?"

"They take the flavour from whatever it is the bean tastes like." Hermione said.

"How do you mean?"

"Well Bertie Bott was trying to turn ordinary food into sweet form, but then he mixed up his formulas and made them taste wrong, but he decided that 'a risk with very mouthful' was a really good way to sell them."

"How could you possibly know that?" Lisa asked, watching as Sally alternately grinned or grimaced as she munched through the beans.

"I read about it in _Modern Magical History_," Hermione pulled the book out of her bag and showed them the title, "it says he was the first wizard to try compressing food instead of expanding it."

Lily looked at Hermione's bag again, noting for the first time that it was almost sagging from the weight of whatever was inside it. "Is that all books?" She asked.

Hermione nodded, "I like reading, and sometimes you can find really interesting facts just by flicking through a good book."

Lisa gave Lily another look, which Lily found easy to interpret. They thought they were big readers, but Hermione put them to shame. _No wonder she's so smart,_ Lily decided as she opened up another Chocolate Frog.

"I wonder how many flavours there are," Sally said, examining a bean closely. "Like they could have a flavour for everything that exists in the world, but could they do other things, like disappointment? What would disappointment taste like? And happiness? I'd like to try a happiness flavoured bean."

"I suppose it would taste different to everyone," Lisa said as she selected another wand from the little paper bag, "it would be kind of like love potions." She looked at Hermione, like she was expecting the Gryffindor to jump in with a clever comment, but all she received was a blank look, "do you not know this?" She looked positively ecstatic to know something that Hermione didn't. "Love potions taste and smell different to everyone who drinks them, because love is different for everyone."

"Wow," Sally's eyes had widened in the way they always did when she learned something amazing about magic. "That's beautiful."

"Well different things make different people happy," Lisa said matter of factly, "so what tastes like happiness to you would taste entirely different to someone else."

Still looking entranced, Sally took another Bertie Bott and ate it, declaring happily, "peppermint."

Shaking her head, Lily checked the card, finding out she had another one of Ptolemy. She stuffed it into a pocket on her jacket and looked out of the window, shocked to see that it was almost completely dark. "We should probably get changed," she said to her friends.

Five minutes later, just as Sally was managing to straighten her collar, the Hogwarts Express slowed to a halt and the racket of students trying to get off reached them. Frowning, Lily looked over to Hermione, who was looking worried. "I would have thought Harry and Ron would have come looking for you."

"So did I," she said it plainly, but Lily recognised the tone, even if Sally and Lisa didn't. It was the tone of someone who wasn't sure if her friends were still her friends. Maybe Hermione was worried, just as she had been, that she was the odd one out of her little group. As Lisa and Sally went out to join the bustle of students, Lily hung back to make sure Hermione was alright.

"Maybe they didn't even get on the train?" She suggested, but Hermione just scoffed.

"Yeah, they just decided they didn't want to come back to Hogwarts this year."

"Well maybe something happened to them."

The Gryffindor took a deep breath, then frowned at Lily, spending just a little too long looking at her tie. Feeling self-conscious, Lily put a hand to her throat and covered the silver and green. "I'm just saying, there's all sorts of things that could have happened."

Nodding, Hermione left the carriage and disappeared into the throng.

"She's not staying?" Sally asked, sticking her head back round the door, "and come on by the way, everyone's leaving."

"She saw the tie and left," Lily explained, stepping out to join her friends as they filed off the train and headed for the horseless carriages that would take the older year students up to the castle.

"Well good riddance," said Lisa, "especially if all it took was seeing you were in Slytherin." The three girls watched as the first years were led away by Hagrid.

"They look tiny," Sally said.

"They're only a year away from us," Lisa reminded her.

"Yeah, but look at that one," she pointed out one extremely excited boy. Lily thought he looked a lot like Sally, bouncing and staring around at everything with eyes wide, but she didn't say that. "He looks like he's about seven."

They bundled onto one of the carriages, Morag joining them a moment later. Morag was another Ravenclaw in their year, and one of Lisa's friends. She was known in the dorms for her fiery temper and ruthlessly logical intellect. It put her at odds with a lot of people, but she was among the best in the year at almost every subject. Unfortunately, one of the people she was at odds with was sharing the carriage with her.

"I see you're still hanging around," she said to Lily by way of greeting.

"Nice to see you too Morag," Lisa said, "how was your holiday, mine was fantastic, what did you do?"

The Scottish girl stared at her, then smiled, "it's good to see you too Lisa." She managed a smile for Sally and a brief second of not-quite-glaring for Lily before turning back to her dorm-mate. "Actually I spent most of the summer in Dorset with my grandparents. There are some communities of wizards in Dorset that have been almost untouched for centuries. They've lived alongside the muggles for generations and no one's ever really left or entered."

"That sounds terrifying," Lisa said, raising an eyebrow, "don't the muggles notice?"

"If they do they keep their mouths shut. I suppose when you live around magic for your entire life you think it's normal."

Lily knew that her presence was unwanted, but before she could decide whether it was worth finding a different carriage they set off, trundling up the long and winding path to the castle. Lisa and Morag got down to a typical Ravenclaw discussion, reviewing their homework and complaining about Hermione Granger outdoing them.

"We had her in the compartment with us on the train," Lisa told her.

"I bet that was insufferable. She's got her hand up in every single lesson as well. She would have been better in Ravenclaw." It wasn't a question. In fact, as Lily listened in she realised that Morag didn't ask questions. She stated things as though she were the expert on every subject she happened to debate. Funnily enough, and she had to hide a grin as the thought occurred to her, it reminded Lily of the way Hermione had seemed during the journey.

In no time at all they were arriving at the castle, and as each carriage stopped the students jumped out and hurried in to the Great Hall, eager to catch up with their house-mates and begin the feast. Lily wasn't quite as optimistic, more looking forward to taking a seat as far away from her housemates as she reasonably could and eating alone in silence before hurrying off to bed. She tried to shake the thoughts out of her head, but as they separated to go to their own separate tables she couldn't help feeling a twinge of loneliness as she saw Sally and Lisa immediately swallowed into their friends.

She couldn't sit on the end of the bench like she once would have done, because the First years had to sit there, but she managed to put at least a person and a half's distance between herself and Theodore Nott. He was actually one of the nicer boys in her year, for whatever that was worth, but she still didn't like him. He was an oily toad of a boy, always looking to improve his own position, no matter what the cost.

Bored waiting for the First Years to arrive and the feast to begin, she started to scan the Gryffindor table, picking out Hermione's mass of bushy hair easily. Strangely enough she couldn't see the shock of red hair that signalled Ron Weasley, and looking more closely it seemed like Harry Potter had failed to arrive as well. She was just wondering what might have happened when the doors burst open and McGonagall strode confidently in, leading a gaggle of scared looking eleven year olds with her.

**An:-** I was so uncertain about putting Hermione in this chapter. I love Hermione Granger, she's my favourite character, but I had one very firm rule when I started writing these, and I may or may not have just broken it.

There's a phenomenon in fiction called 'Gumping,' which is where the main character of the story has a behind the scenes influence on famous historical events. The term comes from Forrest Gump (obviously) In this case the famous historical events would of course be the events of the books, and my characters are the main characters. I absolutely do not want them to gump. They are not hiding behind the scenes to make sure Dobby can get the Gillyweed, they do not accidentally fire the curse that really kills Bellatrix, they are not there to catch Sirius and make sure he actually survives the events of Book 5 (it occurs to me that some of those are probably spoilers but frankly if you're reading this and haven't read or seen all the originals then what the hell are you doing with your time?)

I'm not sure if this counts. They don't really influence anything at all, they don't make a startling or life changing realisation that will help Hermione later in the books, in fact all they do is offer the hand of friendship for a train journey. But, they still are interacting with a main character, which is not going to happen very often.

Nothing much else to say about this chapter. I loved the 'telepathic best friends conversation.' I loved having them talk about magic (this idea may or may not be coming back later) And I really don't think Hermione is shallow, I just think that her only experiences of Slytherin have been bad, so she is understandably wary about them.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:-**In terms of writing, I'm well into Chapter Nine, and the Basilisk has already attacked. It's kind of weird going back and posting these and trying to remember what I actually put in them.

**Chapter Four: Right Back to It**

When they finally left the hall they had gathered the usual assortment of Slytherin first years. Old family names who came strutting across to the table as though they had never expected to go anywhere else and two students who no one recognised. Lily thought they looked far too excited, and decided that they obviously hadn't heard the reputation of the house they had just joined.

The feast had been as excellent as always, but Lily had barely touched any of it, starting to feel sick as she looked up the table and saw Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, sitting opposite each other and talking animatedly about something. Looking the other way she could see the first years starting to introduce themselves, and unlike the Gryffindors or Ravenclaws, who wanted to know whether they knew anything about magic, or if they liked the castle, the Slytherins wanted to know the pedigree of the students' birth.

Lily remembered something similar from her first year, but at least Pansy had waited until they were in the dorm before she started the interrogation. That year Tracy Davis had been the odd one out, a half blood who quickly established herself as little more than Pansy's lapdog. Millicent Bulstrode had become Pansy's muscle, leaving Lily and Daphne Greengrass as the only two who were left. Daphne was the daughter of a prestigious magical family, almost as old and wealthy as the Malfoys, and Lily was the daughter of the disgraced side of the family. The Moons were famous among the old Slytherins for going off to live with muggles because they hadn't had enough money to carry on living in the family mansion.

Of course, Lily couldn't actually remember that, it was her father who had been forced to leave his old home, taking his new wife with him to live in a poky little one bed-room flat in central London. Grandfather and Grandmother Moon had lived out the rest of their days in their own little flat in Yorkshire, and all Lily had ever known of how they had used to live had been seeing the old black and white photos of her grandparents standing outside the mansion in their finest formal robes.

Since then they had had her, and moved into their new house in the Norfolk countryside, and Lily had never wanted for anything. Her mother had become a successful author right out of school and her father was quick to rise up through the firm he worked for. But still, whenever they had met the Malfoys or the Notts during their holidays they had made it clear that they thought of the Moons as being on the same level of the Weasleys.

When she thought about it, it was amazing that she had made it through the previous year at all. She didn't even want to think about what would have happened if she hadn't had Sally and Lisa to help her through it. As the Slytherins all trooped down to the dungeons she looked wistfully up the stairs to where the Ravenclaws were already trying to drag their new recruits into one of their famous house-wide debates. What she wouldn't give to be part of that conversation, instead of walking silently off to one side of the rest of her house.

Up ahead she heard one of the new prefects say, "facta non verba," and the wall slid aside to reveal the Slytherin Common Room. It was as dimly lit as always, the murky green of the lake casting rippling shadows over the sofas and bookshelves. Most of the books were supposed to be in the library, or with the older students, but Slytherins had a nasty habit of leaving books lying around when they didn't need them anymore. Lily had managed to learn some quite advanced magic, just by reading whatever was left in the common room after the OWL students had gone.

She made her way straight for the new second year dorm, hoping to get into bed and asleep before Pansy had even come in. It was exactly as she remembered, the brazier in the middle of the room still unlit and the fittings still as dark green and oppressive as she remembered. Her trunk was already sitting at the foot of her bed and she jumped into it gratefully, yanking the covers over her head so she could change into her nightgown.

By the time the other girls came into the dorm she already had her head buried under the covers, lying as still as she could and hoping they would leave her alone. She listened as Pansy instructed Millicent and Tracey on what they were going to do the next day in classes, but then the lights disappeared and they were back in the total blackness of the dorm. There was a little more shuffling around as the others prepared for bed, and then they were asleep.

Lily didn't sleep very well at all that first night, and she was so glad that it wasn't because of Pansy and Millicent. Her brain had finally caught up with the rest of her, and it was reminding her that tomorrow she was going to be starting at Hogwarts again. Huddled under her blankets she squeezed her pillow close to her chest and grinned to herself.

* * *

The lights exploded on the next morning like they always did, rousing the girls and starting the usual round of curses from Pansy. She hated waking up early, and expressed herself with words that Lily was sure her mother didn't know she knew. Lily on the other hand sprang out of bed, hooking her towels over her arms and rushed to the bathroom, neatly sidestepping Pansy's flailing arms. In the shower she let the hot water pour over her face and wake her up, then dried herself quickly and went back into the dorm, where Daphne was just waking up as well.

Smiling to her friend, Lily ducked behind the curtains of her bed along with her uniform and started to get dressed. After some of the tricks that had been pulled on her the year before she had gotten used to getting dressed quickly, and in less than a minute she was on her way into the Common Room.

It was empty save for a few fifth years already starting in on their OWL work. Lily also saw a fourth year that she recognised. The year before she had seen the girl telling Pansy Parkinson off for bullying her. After Draco Malfoy had lost them the lead the year before, Slytherin had pulled together spectacularly to overtake Ravenclaw for the House Cup victory, and everyone knew that Lily, despite her affiliations, earned points.

Of course, in the end it hadn't mattered, but Lily didn't like thinking about the end of the last year. Deserved or not on the part of Harry Potter and his friends, it had been so hard to sit there in the Great Hall and watch Dumbledore take everything away from them. Her parents had been appropriately outraged when she had told them the tale, which kind of made up for it though.

She wondered where Harry and his friend had been the night before. Hermione had been really upset, even if she was keeping it under wraps. Lily started to browse the bookshelves, wondering whether any of the older years had left books she could read. She liked to go to breakfast early, but when she checked her watch she realised it was still far too early for the food to be ready. Humming to herself, she wandered to the other side of the Common Room, looking at the pictures of previous years. It was strange, seeing pictures of her own parents standing and waving from out of the black and white images.

She went back further, before her parents had been around. It seemed almost like the Slytherins in those pictures were happy, actually smiling and laughing with each other instead of staring out intently. It went back a few years, until suddenly the pictures became much darker. Glaring out from the Common Room were boys that looked like thugs and one face in the middle that caught her eye. He was in every picture for a full seven years, going from bland faced to incredibly handsome. His eyes were hypnotic, holding her own even through the years. The other students were looking to him with almost slavish devotion.

She actually reached out and touched one of the pictures of the boy in his second year. He would have been her age, and yet he already looked like he was in charge of all the other students. Even the sixth and seventh years were looking down at him from their places standing behind the rest. A huge man was sitting at the front, and while it could have looked like he was at the front, it looked more like he was the right hand man of the boy.

"See something you like?"

She flinched and turned around to see a third year boy looking over her shoulder. He was vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't quite place the face. "Higgs," he said, holding out his hand, "Terence, nice to meet you."

"You're the Slytherin Seeker," she realised, shaking his hand, "you're good."

"Not good enough apparently, but thanks anyway."

"Do you know who this boy is?" She asked, pointing out the student.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because look at him," she leaned in close, adjusting her glasses to get a closer look, "even the teacher looks like he's deferring to him."

"I can tell you who the teacher is, but I don't know if that does you any good."

"It's a start, who is he?"

"Horace Slughorn, head of Slytherin house. He retired about ten years ago when Snape took over. According to my dad he was a great potions teacher, but, well..." he nodded at the picture himself. "Always a bit of a hanger-on."

"A hanger-on?"

"My dad was part of his 'Slug Club.'" Terence made sarcastic air quotes, "it was this group of wizards who Slughorn thought would go far in government or celebrity life. And then when they got there, they would feel like they owed Slughorn something."

Lily was staring at him, wondering about the way he spoke. He seemed to notice, smiling at her, "I'm not like the people in your year?"

"No."

"I'm a half-blood, and we live in central London. I get a lot more muggle in my life than most Slytherins."

"That would probably be why I have never heard about you before."

He nodded, "probably. The first thing I learned here was that if you weren't an old family name, they didn't want to know."

"So was your father in Slytherin?"

"Ravenclaw actually," Terence shrugged, "I really don't know how I ended up here, but it's much nicer than you think."

"How do you know I don't like it?"

"I saw you last year. You were in the Common Room every day before the rest of your dorm were up, went to breakfast before them." His eyes had pity in them, "I know what bullying looks like. I had enough of it myself when I was in first year."

She stared at the picture rather than meet his eyes, "well I made it. I've got friends, that's all I need."

"Do you want more friends?"

She frowned at him, "what?"

"Look, some of us have been talking. You're smart, you earn points, and you're good at magic. Do you want to join us in our study groups?"

"Oh," Lily's eyes widened, "I, uhm, I don't know, can I think about it?"

"Of course," he smiled at her, "it was nice talking to you Lily."

"It was nice talking to you too."

He smiled and walked back to his friends, leaving her to stare at the picture, before deciding that it really was time for breakfast now.

* * *

She had a long breakfast, knowing that Pansy was going to be late that day. She enjoyed herself, looking across to where Sally was practically buried under a pile of French toast and scrambled eggs. Lisa was drinking a glass of orange juice and staring in disbelief at a girl who Lily didn't recognise. The girl had long waves of brilliant white hair, and was chattering away animatedly to Lisa, who was looking increasingly confused by whatever she was hearing.

Up at the staff table McGonagall and Flitwick were involved in a heated debate about something, and both of them were casting looks to Gilderoy Lockhart, who was somehow managing to eat a bowl of cornflakes while still showing every single one of his teeth. _It must take practice to not let the milk spill out of his teeth,_ she decided.

Suddenly the Gryffindor table went mad, a voice that could be heard throughout the entire hall. Every eye turned to where a red headed boy was staring in horror at a red envelope in his hands. Harry Potter was on one side, Hermione Granger on the other. After the initial explosion of noise Lily could start to make out words.

"I DON'T SUPPOSE YOU STOPPED TO THINK WHAT YOUR FATHER AND I WENT THROUGH WHEN WE SAW IT WAS GONE —" It was a woman's voice, magnified a hundred times until it shook dust from the enchanted ceiling. It sounded like it had been a loud voice before, but amplified it was enough to make Lily's ears hurt. She couldn't imagine what the Gryffindors were going through. "—LETTER FROM DUMBLEDORE LAST NIGHT, I THOUGHT YOUR FATHER WOULD DIE OF SHAME, WE DIDN'T BRING YOU UP TO BEHAVE LIKE THIS, YOU AND HARRY COULD BOTH HAVE DIED —" The red hair had sunk almost underneath the table, and Harry Potter was looking sheepish. "—ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED — YOUR FATHER'S FACING AN INQUIRY AT WORK, IT'S ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT AND IF YOU PUT ANOTHER TOE OUT OF LINE WE'LL BRING YOU STRAIGHT BACK HOME."

Silence, in which every student and staff member stared at Ronald Weasley, who had all but disappeared under the table, save for a shock of red hair. Someone over in Hufflepuff giggled, and the whole hall returned to normal, Hermione closing her book to very obviously give a 'you got what you deserved' speech. Lily watched the three for a few seconds before going back to her porridge. By that time Snape was walking down the table handing out their timetables. It looked about the same as the last year, and their first lesson was Transfiguration with the Ravenclaws.

_Could they have picked a harder subject for our first lesson back?_ Lily wondered as she spotted Pansy entering the hall. She made her escape and headed back to the dorm to collect her books, glad that she didn't have a Defence Against the Dark Arts class until the next day. Something told her she wasn't going to enjoy her lessons with Gilderoy Lockhart. Thankfully, their Astronomy class had also been moved, so they had them on Fridays now, which at least meant she would be able to sleep over the weekends.

They still had potions with the Gryffindors, which she was sure would be just as fun as it had been the year before. Snape never missed an opportunity to put the Gryffindors down, and apart from anything else it was really boring to see. Charms was now with the Ravenclaws though, and it would be good to see whether having the Charms teacher as your head of house made a difference.

As she was making her way back up towards the Transfiguration classroom she bumped into Lisa, who was just coming out of the hall. "Ready for Transfiguration?" She asked.

"Not even slightly, you?"

"Unlike you, I opened my Transfiguration books over the summer."

"How about your Charms?"

"Shut up."

"What's Sally got first?"

"Herbology with the Gryffindors."

"That sounds like fun."

"Yes but you actually like Herbology, some of us are normal and like sensible things like Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"As taught by Gilderoy Lockhart?"

Lisa pulled a face, "Good point."

"When's your first Potions?"

"Tomorrow morning."

"Good for you, I have History of Magic. I'm going to be asleep by lunchtime."

Lisa's eyebrow went up, "Good for me? Potions? Snape?"

"Better than Binns."

"I'll let you know tomorrow," the two girls were making their way up the stairs, and when they reached the third floor Lisa nodded down the corridor, "I'm off to the dorm, see you in class."

Lily nodded, "what was the homework again?"

Lisa gave her a long silent stare, "off to a flying start?"

"You tell me what the Transfiguration work is and I'll tell you what the Charms work was."

There was another long pause, and then Lisa nodded, "I'll see you five minutes before the class."

**AN:-** Tracey Davis, the girl with no canon portrayal who everyone still thinks they know. Kinda like my two. I find it really weird reading other people's Lisa Turpin or Sally-Anne Perks fanfics and wondering why they aren't acting like _my_ Lisa and Sally. In some of these fics the two girls don't even know each other Lily doesn't exist! Fevered frog-spawn chewing madness.

I'm not entirely sure at this point how the Moon's came to lose their money. Given the time frame it would be somewhere during or at the end of the first war against Voldemort (1970-1980-ish) so maybe some of the other purebloods took all their money to help in the war effort. I'll firm it up later because I do want to be a significant plot point, I'm just not sure quite how at the moment.

Facta non verba: Deeds, not words. In HP5 the videogame it's the password for a Slytherin portrait down in the dungeons that leads you to the Library. I thought it seemed appropriate enough for a common room password. Of course later it changes to Pure-Blood, during Christmas. I imagine that the dorms in Slytherin are one long corridor, girls' on one side, boys' on the other, that intersect in the middle to lead into the common room. Seven dorms along each side means that Lily's year are now one door closer to the middle.

OMG inter-book continuity! That's right I remembered that I had a third year girl tell Pansy off last year, and now she's a fourth year! This information is totally irrelevant!

Terence Higgs is fast becoming my favourite new character. Obviously the boy in the pictures is Tom Riddle, and the Ravenclaw first year Lisa's talking to is Luna. The funny thing, like I said before, about writing these after all the books have come out, is that I can have characters and objects that have logically always been around, but weren't introduced until later in the actual series. Luna is a year younger than Harry, so she must have been at Hogwarts since his second year, we just don't hear about her until Book 5.

The timetable for Hogwarts is impossible to create. Seven years of students having classes often with two houses, and yet only one teacher per subject? No. There is no timetable that can be made for this. So I won't try. Work out what Harry's having, give Lily something else unless the class overlaps. In Third Year at least this will become easier since they'll be picking their own classes.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN:-** May be a pretty big drop off in updates for a while. If you just can't survive without your weekly doses of Lily, Lisa and Sally please check my profile page for more information. (if anyone out there really does like the story that much then you are just far too sweet)

**Chapter Five: Moonlight Conversations**

The day went about as well as Lily had expected. She had forgotten almost everything about Transfiguration, but her Charms work was better than ever, and she was the first in the class to master the _Aresto Momentum_ spell, even though she could only do it for a few seconds. It was actually a very fun lesson, because they had to throw things into the air and try and hit them while they were falling. Flitwick seemed to relish any opportunity to get out his velvet cushions, and they paired off to let one person throw the cushion while the other cast the spell.

Lisa turned out to have better aim than Lily did, but she wasn't as good at the charm itself, whereas Lily managed to hit a cushion, a candle and Flitwick. Once the Charms professor had regained momentum he awarded Lily five points to Slytherin for managing to produce such a strong charm. It almost made up for Lisa spending the rest of the lesson poking fun at her for her lack of accuracy.

That evening Lily left the dormitory early and went wandering the castle. It was one of her favourite pastimes, mostly because it kept her away from the dorm and Common Room. She decided to go the long way to the seventh floor, passing through the East Wing so that she would be able to get a look at the greenhouses. She had more than enough time to get there before Lisa and Sally would arrive, and she wanted to remember what the castle looked like. Partly it was to remind herself of the secret passageways they had discovered the year before.

She ran into Daphne as she was walking out into the clock-tower courtyard, but she didn't stay around to talk, heading over the stone bridge into another courtyard. She liked walking around Hogwarts, especially quite late at night. The lanterns glowed softly along her path and high above the windows were shining with light. The whole place looked different, but in the best way possible. When she had first seen it, rising out of the lake like a fairytale, it had been dark, lit only by the windows and the flare of light that had been the Great Hall. Now it looked just as it had that first time, and she took a moment to stop and stare out across the lake to where the Forbidden Forest squatted dark on the landscape.

Hurrying on, she made her way through the building as the lights were going out, making sure to avoid Filch as he trudged past, breathing heavily and sticking his lamp into dark places. Technically she was allowed to be out, but she didn't want to risk it. At several points she slipped through hidden tapestries or under trick stones to bypass the bigger corridors. Her route cut the time nearly in half, and she was reaching the top floor within the hour. At one point she had even stumbled across a new passageway, a dark and dingy tunnel with a ladder that moved when she got on, so all she had to do was hold on tight and ride it to the top.

On the seventh floor she drew out her wand and whispered, "_Lumos."_ The thin beam of light illuminated almost the entire corridor, and she made her way quickly towards the portrait. She didn't want to spend too long in the darker corners, because she knew that somewhere out of the way the Window of Noitcelfer was hiding. It had terrified Lisa, and the absolute last thing Lily wanted was to run into it. She had absolutely no desire to know her future.

She found Hatton right where they had left him, his man-sized portrait easy enough to spot from his bright red robes and nervous expression. Hatton had been a wizard during a bowtruckle uprising, and it had left him nervous and paranoid. Sally had done some looking into him, and had found that he built the secret tunnel after the uprising, just in case it happened again. His portrait sat at the entrance to the tunnel now, and to get through it, all you had to do was tell him the bowtruckles were raising havoc.

"Hello Hatton," she said as she sat down next to the portrait, holding her wand up to keep the corridor lit, "how's things?"

"Hello young lady, do I know you?"

"Oh we spoke a few times last year," Lily said, remembering just how bad Hatton's memory was. She had read somewhere that portraits weren't really like the people who they were when they were alive. But it was sometimes very hard to remember that when you were sitting there and talking to them. Hatton nodded sagely at her.

"I imagine it was a thrilling conversation."

"Oh absolutely," Lily assured him.

"I told you about my valiant defence of this castle against the bowtruckle menace?"

"You made the story come alive."

"I was always told I had a gift of oration."

"Mm."

At that moment Sally came bounding round the corner, wand lit much brighter than Lily's was. She spotted the Slytherin and raced over, sliding the last few feet on her knees and coming to a rest on the other side of Hatton's portrait, "where's Lisa?" She asked by way of greeting.

"Not here yet, she probably got caught up with some great Ravenclaw magic debate."

"Not so," Lisa came round the corner, "Sally just didn't notice me when she rushed past me back there."

"Sorry, I think I thought you were a shadow."

"Well I taught I taw a puddy tat so…" Lisa trailed off as she saw the blank stares on her friends, "Tweety Bird? Warner Brothers? Oh whatever."

"What's Warner Brothers?" Lily asked as they moved into place in front of Hatton.

"More animation."

"Oh." Lily had loved animation ever since they saw _Beauty and the Beast_ at the cinema the year before. She decided she wanted to know what this 'Tweety Bird' thing was. Maybe over Christmas. Lisa was already leaning to towards Hatton though.

"Sir, the bowtruckles are raising havoc."

"Raising havoc!" Hatton threw up his arms, "oh my it's all happening again!"

His portrait swung forwards, the paving slab tipped upwards, and they were launched into the slide. Water soaked them to the skin as the tunnel banked sharply to the left and down. She guessed they were already somewhere around the fifth floor, and accelerating fast. The tunnel took them on a wild rid as they whooped and cheered their way down the castle, banging off the walls occasionally as the turns became too sharp. The wild ride never lasted very long though, and before they knew it they were cartwheeling out onto the grass just outside the Great Hall.

They lay there for a few seconds, panting and laughing, before Lisa propped herself up on her elbow and stared at where they had come out. "How did we do that?" She asked. "The Great Hall doesn't have enough space for people sized tunnels in it, but it looks like we came right through the middle of it."

"Isn't it obvious?" Sally said, pushing herself shakily to her feet, "magic!"

"Of course," Lisa stood as well, walking over to Lily and offering her hand, "I forgot about magic. The all-purpose solution to everything."

"Don't make fun," Lily said as she allowed herself to be hauled up, "we did just speak to a painting, I think it's possible there's other magic at work here."

"So where to now?" Sally asked, brushing herself and looking out over the grounds, "I don't want to go back to bed just yet."

"Me neither," Lisa was scanning the area over towards the Quidditch pitch. "Lily, any ideas?"

"I thought maybe down to the boat house?"

"Why would you want to go down to the boathouse?"

"Just because, it's out of the way, and I bet it looks really lovely at this time of night."

"And how do we get back in?"

"Well I was reading an old diary in the Common Room earlier, and whoever wrote it said that they found a back way into the dungeons, so we can get in through there."

"A back way into the dungeons?" Lisa's eyes brightened, "That sounds promising, and I love finding new secret passageways."

Sally nodded and did a little bounce to face the boathouse, "off we go!" She exclaimed, marching off. Lily and Lisa exchanged a look and a smile at their friend, and hurried after her.

True to Lily's prediction, the boathouse looked beautiful, the lamps casting flickering shadows on the water, which was clear and still. The moon was shining high above them, making it nearly as bright as day. They three of them stretched out on the dock, looking up at the stars, their feet hanging over the water and occasionally getting splashed with cold water.

"Good idea Lily," Lisa said, "this is the perfect way to start the year."

"I thought so."

"What do you have tomorrow?"

Lily closed her eyes and brought her timetable up in her head, "History of Magic, then Herbology, then Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Oh boy, you get Lockhart first."

"Looking forward to it."

"Yeah," said Sally from their other side, "but I heard some of the older years talking today, and they said that he might be a bit over the top, but he wasn't like, _bad_ bad."

"I'll believe that when I see it." Lily was much more looking forward to Herbology, which was one of her favourite subjects. Along with Charms she had discovered an aptitude for it the year before and it had helped all of them in Potions, because she had been able to actually understand what some of the ingredients were. The book Snape liked to use was very out of date, and some of the plants went by entirely different names nowadays.

"So you've got Potions in the morning," Lily remembered, "then what?"

"Flying, and History of Magic in the afternoon."

"Aw," Lily sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, "you get flying first."

Lisa shrugged, "you have it on Wednesday though don't you?"

"Yeah but still."

"We could go flying tomorrow if you want."

"I think I might have to do some homework tomorrow," Lily said morosely. "I've already got that Transfiguration essay to finish, and the Charms work from Flitwick…"

Sally sat up and grinned at her, "I remember last year when you always had all the work done the afternoon you got it."

"Well last year at this time I didn't have you two as friends."

"Of course you had us as friends," Sally said, "we just weren't doing things like this."

Lily smiled at that, lying back down again and holding up her hand, "there's Orion," she said, pointing, "so Scorpius should be somewhere around here."

Lisa scanned the sky, "I was never any good at this," she muttered.

"There," Sally pointed, "and if we go like this," she made hand shapes across the sky, "ursa minor." The other two looked over at her and she smiled, "I like looking at the stars." She said, "my granddaddy and I used to go camping, and she showed me how to. I just didn't know about all the magical things they could do."

"Didn't you have any idea that you were…" Lily searched for the appropriate word, "different?"

Sally shrugged, "well you've met Henry, so that was my idea of normal, and I was a lot like him. Apparently when I was a baby I was really good at getting into small places. I guess that might have been magic, but my brother managed to end up on the roof once, and it doesn't look like he's magic at all." She went back to looking at the stars, "what about you two?"

"I fell out of a tree and bounced when I was seven," Lisa said, "I was an adventurous child."

"My hair once grew about a foot overnight because I wanted to look like Rowena Ravenclaw," Lily remembered suddenly. "I saw a picture of her in a book and my mother said that I had lovely long hair like her, but the picture in the book had hair down to her waist, and when I woke up the next morning mine was as well."

Lisa examined her friend, "You'd look good with longer hair."

Lily picked up a few strands, "it's already more than long enough. Any further past my shoulder blades and it just gets heavy and uncomfortable and it's a pain to wash." She looked over at Sally, "now you'd look beautiful with longer hair," she told the Hufflepuff.

"My hair gets curly, and the longer it gets the curlier it gets." Sally had had her hair cut over the summer, and it now hung at her shoulders, a mass of golden curls that waved in all directions whenever she moved her head even slightly. Sally's natural twitchiness meant it tended to look like a permanently moving sea of gold.

"And you Lisa?"

Lisa's hair was pulled back into a ponytail like it was most of the time. Lily could count on one hand the number of times she had seen Lisa out of the ponytail. "I don't like my hair long," she admitted, "but my mum and dad do, so I never have it cut too short."

They sat in silence, staring at the stars and the water and enjoying the quiet. Eventually it was well past time for them to make their way back in, and Lisa led the way up the stone steps towards the castle. "So what's the big plan for this year girls?" She asked as they walked.

"What do you mean?" Lily asked from the back.

"Well last year we were exploring all the time, and just trying to get through it. I thought we should try and really do something this year."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm going to try out for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team."

"Ooh," Sally said, "that's a really good one. Uhm, I guess I'm going to try and win fifty house points for Hufflepuff."

"You'd better work on your Transfiguration," Lisa said, smiling to take the edge off, "all those points Ravenclaw are going to win…"

"What about you Lily?" Sally asked, looking back down at her friend.

"Oh I don't know." Lily could actually think of several things she would like to do, but since a lot of them involved getting back at Pansy Parkinson in some way she didn't really want to mention them to her friends. She was well aware that they were very Slytherin thoughts to have, and she didn't like them at all.

* * *

The next day she trudged off to History of Magic already prepared to be distinctly bored, and it didn't disappoint. It was as though nothing had changed, Binns floating through the blackboard and beginning his lesson without even a glance to the class, then leaving the same way when it was done. Several of the students were in such a stupor that they didn't even realise the lesson had ended, and it was only when they were roused by their friends that they collected their things and left.

Herbology was next, and it more than made up for the disappointing start to the day. Professor Sprout led them to Greenhouse Three, which had some of the more dangerous plants, like a full sized Venomous Tentacula. The year before Lily had been allowed to handle a cutting of one, and it had given her a nasty bite; she still had the mark on her finger. She gave the thing a wide berth as they got to work on their first lesson, which was repotting Mandrakes.

It was hot and dirty work, and she loved every second of it. Watching Pansy Parkinson squeal with distaste every time she had to uproot one was her own private comedy show, and Draco Malfoy looked a lot less like the refined heir to the Malfoy legacy when he was covered from head to foot in mud. A Mandrake he had been trying to pot had overturned the pot on him instead, showering him in mud and following it up with two handfuls pelted into his perfect blond hair.

Lily had even managed to earn ten points for Slytherin by knowing what Mandrakes could be used for, and all in all, as she trotted back to the castle for a wash before dinner, she couldn't have been happier with the way it had gone. Sprout had given her the little smile that she always gave to her favourite students, and it had made Lily feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But unfortunately, the good day couldn't last forever, and it was with a sense of trepidation that she climbed the staircase to the third floor and the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. She had heard that the Gryffindors' lesson had been eventful to say the least when Lockhart had thought it was a good idea to release Cornish Pixies into the classroom. Hopefully he wasn't about to pull a repeat performance, although she could also have done without hearing about the fifty-four question test he had given them to start with.

Obviously, she hadn't bothered to open any of the books he had set them. She had a feeling that the blurb on the back of them probably contained more useful information than the whole of the rest of the text combined. Besides, surely the questions would be common knowledge, she didn't imagine that there was a whole lot of depth that Lockhart could put together that many difficult questions. And most of the information would be related to Defence anyway, surely?

She realised she was trying to reassure herself in advance, which probably wasn't a good thing. Settling herself outside the classroom she dug out _Wanderings with Werewolves_ and started to read, _surely it couldn't hurt, just to get an idea…_

**AN:-** You can go your own way... go your own way. Sorry, just got back from playing a gig and cannot get that song out of my head.

I like toying with Flitwick as a teacher. He reminds me a lot of an English teacher I once had, so I'm trying to bring that across. Any excuse to bring out the cushions, or have class outside...

JK was always kind of vague on the whole issue of curfew. Sometimes the students were out late without any problems, and other times no one was allowed out of the houses after a certain time. Obviously after midnight or something is bad, but between 9-10 pm? What exactly was the rule there? Anyway, generally I just use the layout of the castle from the HP videogames, because it's a pretty decent interpretation I think and it has lots of secret shortcuts which I steal and pretend are my own.

Lisa quoting Tweety Pie = too cute. Sally's wand is the brightest lit, of course. I know a lot of what I'm doing is more expanding on ideas from canon instead of strictly sticking to it, but I think it makes sense that someone like Sally would be able to produce a really brillisnt glare of light, whereas Lily could only manage a thin pencil-beam. Oh and, solving the mystery of the movie they saw last year. Yeah, it was Beauty and the Beast, possibly Disney's greatest film ever (discuss in the reviews!) and released in 1991.

I love having them talk. I'm well aware some people might find it boring, but I just love having them sit and talk about nothing important. The hair debate is also to give people a slightly better idea of what they look like. Lily = hair down to her shoulders, very dark brown (obvs) Lisa = long hair, brunette but not severely dark, always in ponytail, Sally = medium-long hair, curly, very very golden blonde. Character's hair is in no way stolen from The Worst Witch.

More inter-book continuity. Last year I made a one sentence reference to Lily getting a bad bite from a VT, and now she doesn't like them very much. See, there's just so many layers! Oh, and I know that Gryf and Slytherin had Herbology together in the movie, but in the book Gryffindor has it with Hufflepuff, so that's the continuity I'm going for.

Next chapter, Lockhart in all his glory.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:-** And now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, put your hands together for the one, the only, the amazing!

**Chapter Six: Gilderoy Lockhart**

Ten minutes later she looked up as the rest of the class arrived, wishing she hadn't bothered. Gilderoy Lockhart's gift of the silver tongue didn't extend to the printed page. By the time she had read the phrase 'the quaint little village' for the fourteenth time in the first chapter she was ready to start tearing the pages out and scattering them around the castle. She recognised the signs of a writer trying to create suspense, but it was failing miserably; especially since the book had Werewolf right there in the title.

Pushing herself to her feet she dropped the bag back into her book and heaved it onto her shoulder. Having to carry around the entire collected works of Lockhart was starting to hurt her shoulder quite badly. She lined up with the rest of the students and waited for the man himself to appear, and he didn't disappoint.

Dressed in robes of stunning vermillion, he sashayed out of his classroom and spread his arms wide, like he wanted to scoop the entire class into a group hug, "Welcome!" He said, adding a dramatic pause for effect, "to Defence! Against the Dark Arts!" His voice actually echoed through the corridor, making Lily's ears ring. He paused again, flashing his brilliant smile at them and apparently waiting for applause. But Slytherins were even harder to impress than average students, and this lot were no different, staring at him with looks of disdain.

"Well, into the classroom," he said, not even faltering as he stepped aside to let them traipse in. Lily took a seat near the back and stacked up the books in front of her, trying to create and anti-Lockhart fortress between herself and the dazzling smile. Lockhart was taking his position at the front of the class, one foot on a chair and his arm resting on it, the picture of calm. "Hello second years. Welcome to Defence Against the Dark Arts with me, Gilderoy Lockhart, your new teacher."

He paused again, but once more there was no applause, "Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and," here he gave his biggest pause and his most shining smile yet, "_five-time _winner of _Witch Weekly's_ Most Charming Smile Award. But I don't talk about that; I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her."

It seemed like he wasn't going to stop pausing until someone laughed. He was once more disappointed though, as now most of the class were staring at him in absolute disbelief. Recovering quickly he summoned a stack of parchment from his desk. Lily sighed as her copy of the test floated over to her, and started to look through the questions.

_12. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?_

_17. Which is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite item from his wardrobe?_

_17a. When and where did he acquire it?_

_17b. What special event did he wear it for?_

_Oh._ She flicked through to the last page, _oh my._

* * *

An hour later Lockhart collected the papers in, and started to mark through them. "Well now, this is even worse than the Gryffindors," he said admonishingly, "my favourite item of clothing is of course my hand-made peacock blue cravat, given to me in Yemen when I got rid of a particularly gruesome Grindylow."

_Does he get paid extra for alliteration? _Lily wondered as he continued to flick through the tests. They still hadn't actually opened their books or started to go over any of the basics for Defence, and the lesson was already half over. Lockhart finally finished marking and looked up at the class, shaking his head while still keeping that smile on his face.

"I can see we are going to have to do some serious revision," he said, standing up and putting his hands on his hips, "so I think I will start at the beginning," he went over to his bookshelf, and for one glorious minute Lily thought that he was going to pull out an actual defence book, but instead he came back with _Holidays with Hags._ "So, my first book, _Holidays with Hags._ Chapter One: I Take a Holiday, to Death."

Lily slowly put her head down on the desk in front of her, _this… this is going to be a long lesson._

* * *

Eventually they were freed from Lockhart's clutches, and escaped back down to the Common Room before dinner. Slytherin House was going to be holding trials for their new Quidditch team soon, and the old members were gathering on the sofas in front of the fire talking to Marcus Flint. For some reason, as soon as they got through the door Draco went over to talk to them as well, looking incredibly pleased with himself. Lily frowned and for a moment wondered whether it would be worse going to eavesdrop on them, but decided against she actually didn't care that much about Quidditch anyway.

Rushing to the dorm she dropped her bag onto the bed and caught Daphne just on her way out, "hey, me and the girls are going to the library to study after dinner, do you want to come with us?"

Daphne nodded, "I need a bit of help with the Potions work anyway."

"Sounds good, we'll see you there then," and she hurried out just in time to see Terence storming away from the team and heading out into the hall. Frowning, she followed him, having to run to catch him. "What's wrong?" She asked.

He spun on his heel and glared at her, "that pompous arrogant git Malfoy, that's what." He carried on walking, Lily hurrying to keep up.

"What's he done?"

"He's going to be our new Seeker."

"They haven't even had trials yet, he can't be the Seeker."

"Oh he can be, he just told us." Terence stopped and looked left and right, deciding whether he wanted to go further into the dungeons, or up the staircase, in the end he chose the dungeons, "his father is making a very generous donation to the Slytherin Quidditch team, but it comes with a price, and the price is Draco playing whatever position he wants to."

"And he chose Seeker?" Lily shook her head, "and Flint let him? I thought he wanted to put together a good team after losing last year?"

"With this donation he won't need a good team."

Lily was curious despite herself, "what did he give them?"

Terence stopped and glared at a portrait of Corvinus Malfoy, who had apparently been a teacher back in the 1300s. "Lucius Malfoy has bought the entire team Nimbus Two-Thousand and One brooms."

"What?" Lily's eyes widened, "I can't even imagine how expensive those must be, they're the latest model!"

"Expensive enough to buy Malfoy his way onto the team." Terence viciously kicked a pot, which shattered, "and get me kicked off."

"Well that's not fair at all."

"Yeah, I got that part of it already." He took a deep breath and rubbed his face, "I thought Flint was better than this, he's not a bad captain really."

"So the whole team now has Nimbus Two Thousand and One broomsticks?" Lily didn't see how that was fair.

Terence nodded, "apparently after Potter got bought his broom last year Malfoy's father went looking into the rules on buying broomsticks. They don't have to be owned by the player, they just have to have a willing buyer, and Lucius Malfoy is that guy."

"He willing to throw thousands of Galleons away on helping Slytherin win the Quidditch Cup? That's insane."

Terence seemed to have calmed down a lot, and they now sat on a stone bench in one of the corridors, "he's throwing it on Draco, so that he can be the Seeker. Malfoy told us that that was the only condition. We don't even have to win; he just wants Malfoy on the team."

"The rich really are different," she said quietly, patting his knee, "well I'm sure when they see what a terrible Seeker Malfoy is they'll put you back on the team."

"Yeah, I guess," but he didn't look convinced.

* * *

The next week was a mixture of ups and downs. Every evening she and her friends went to the library and finished their work from the day, which was nice, catching up and chatting about the day, sharing their stories of what mad thing Lockhart had done earlier. Apparently he had taken to acting out scenes from his books in the Gryffindors' classes. Lily made a mental note to try and learn some sort of invisibility spell, just in case he ever decided to repeat the trick in one of her classes.

And then there was Lockhart himself, who seemed to delight in springing out of random corners looking to hand out autographs. Lisa had been caught twice by him as she took the secret passageway from the fifth to the third floor, and Lily had narrowly avoided him when he had spotted a group of Slytherin girls heading out to Flying one day. To make matters even worse, most of the girls in the school seemed to have fallen for it. One day in Transfiguration Sally said she had sneaked a look at Hermione's timetable, and her Defence lessons had had little hearts circling them.

Daphne on the other hand, found him fantastic, "he's done so many amazing things," she argued, "and he's really handsome as well."

When she said that a fourth year Hufflepuff they knew had leaned over and said, "he's far too girly for me. His hair doesn't even look real he's got so much stuff in it."

When the weekend finally arrived Lily thought she would get a chance to sleep in, but unfortunately Terence had heard about the first Slytherin practice of the season, and wanted to see it. She had agreed to go with him for moral support, because he was still more than a little angry about the whole thing. He wanted to see if Draco was really any good, or whether it was all money.

All of which mean that while the lights were still off and Pansy was still snoring Lily made her way out into the Common Room just in time to watch the last green robe disappear through the door. "Ah!" A voice came from the boy's side, "you're awake, good." Terence trotted over, dressed in a striped jumper and smiling, "ready for a little spying?"

"Of course," she said, following him out of the Common Room and into the dungeons.

They stayed just out of sight of the team as they went up to the Entrance Hall and out onto the grounds. Draco was standing at the front of the line next to Flint, almost unnoticeable amongst the older years, who all stood tall and bulky. Lily looked back to Terence, who was definitely taller than her, but still not as big as the rest of his old-teammates. "Is the team always made up of giants?" She asked.

"Well last year we had a Beater who was more my size, but yeah, Flint likes his teams big. Two years ago the Seeker was the biggest one on the team. The only reason they manage to win was because he could just knock the students off their brooms on the way to the Snitch."

"Sounds like a great guy," she said dryly.

Terence shrugged, "well it was his last year, so I went for it the year after and got the position. I thought I'd be in there for at least two or three years…"

"Well there's always the chance that he is a really good Seeker."

Terence shook his head, "I'll believe that when I see it."

When they reached the Quidditch pitch they saw that the Slytherin team was in the middle of a pitched argument with Gryffindor. Some other students from Gryffindor were starting to appear, and they were all moving towards the centre of the pitch. At that moment Malfoy said something and the two Weasley twins leapt forwards, looking outraged. Ron Weasley was very obviously drawing his wand, which made the Slytherins step back. There was a tremendous bang and Weasley went flying backwards, rolling to a stop nearly five feet back.

All the students who had come to watch sped up, and were just in time to see Ron sit up and belch a large black slug onto the front of his robes. "Oh, gross," Lily said, watching the slug worm its way across the grass. The Slytherin team were howling with laughter as Harry Potter and Hermione Granger picked up their friend and started to drag him away towards Hagrid's. The Gryffindor and Slytherin teams were squaring off against each other when Madam Hooch came striding onto the field, "all right, stop that right now," she called, and the two houses divided. "Back inside," she ordered, "no practice today for any of you."

Terence swore under his breath and started to march back to the castle, Lily following behind him, "well that's just perfect, didn't even get to see him play."

"Maybe you can watch them the next time they're playing."

"Yeah," he sighed, then turned back and smiled to her, "well, thanks for following me down anyway, I really appreciate it. We've got a study group meeting this afternoon, would you be interested?"

"You know what?" Lily said as they climbed the steps back into the castle, "I think I would."

* * *

The study group was all Slytherins, but it was much nicer than Lily had thought. They had all different years there, which meant that she received a lot more help with her work than even her friends could give. Like Kayvan, a fifth year boy who was more than willing to look over her Potions work for her, and she didn't even have to do anything in return. She also helped a third year girl called Donna with her Charms work. Apparently, said Donna, she had never ever understood Charms, and was even being given remedial lessons to make up for her missing knowledge.

It felt strange, to be treated like an equal by so many older students, and she noticed that no one from her year had been invited. As Kayvan started to go onto a tangent about Transfiguration, which was obviously his favourite subject, the others started to look very bored. Lily suggested that maybe they should invite Daphne, who would at least be able to talk about Transfiguration with him, and the others jumped at the idea.

Daphne joined them at the study groups, which met once every Saturday. She also came back to the library with Lily, and their other study group got back into the swing of things. Mostly they were doing what they had done last year, spending half their time trying to puzzle their way through Snape's incredibly difficult homework and the other half trying to teach themselves Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Last year it had been in the deciphering of Quirrel's stutter, but he had at least been a competent enough teacher underneath that. With Lockhart it was a whole different story, and that their only real source of information was his books, which were not the best for learning spells and magic.

Halfway through September Padma joined them for some help with a star chart they were supposed to be making, "How does one actually perform the Homorphus Charm?" She asked as she perused _Wanderings with Werewolves._

"I'm not sure," Lisa said, "I've never actually been able to find evidence that it exists."

"Maybe Lockhart made it up himself?" Padma suggested.

"It's possible," Lisa admitted, "but it would require a great deal of research and power and skill and I just don't think…" she trailed off, but it was very obvious where she'd been heading. Daphne and Padma both stared at her.

"I don't think Dumbledore would have hired him if he'd been really useless," Daphne said. "I mean, everyone thinks his books are really great, and he wouldn't lie about having done all those things would he?"

Lisa shrugged, "as long as we can keep teaching ourselves and he doesn't interfere I don't care." She wondered whether it was worth doing the actual work Lockhart had set them, which was to describe (with references) the impact Lockhart had made upon the wizarding fashion world, or whether she should just review the Defence book she had stolen from the Slytherin bookshelf. It had been the book the second years had been assigned the year before, and it was good, if a little archaic in places.

She chose the latter, opening up the battered old book and flicking through to 'Chapter Three: Using _Lumos_ to Drive Dark Creatures Away.' It wasn't a particularly interesting chapter, since mostly it just reminded the trainee witch or wizard that a lot of creatures were afraid of the light, and so if no other spell could be used, casting _Lumos_ might just manage to keep them at bay a little while longer.

"I wouldn't trust that book to much if I was you," said a voice from right behind her. She spun round to see the fourth year Hufflepuff who sometimes joined them, "it's not actually much better than Lockhart's."

"Wasn't it the curriculum last year?" Lily asked, confused.

"Yes," the Hufflepuff spun her chair round to talk to them properly, "but Quirrel wasn't actually the best teacher, especially when it came to the older years." She fished a completely different book from her bag. It had a bright cover and pictures of wand movements and defensive stances on the back. "Try this if you can find it, it's so much better."

Lily took it and couldn't help but laugh when she saw the list of contributors. "What is it?" Padma asked, trying to read it upside down and backwards.

Lily put the book in the middle of the table so they could all see the names 'Selene Moon' and 'Katherine Turpin' on the list. "Wow," said Daphne, taking the book and flicking through it in search of the chapters, "I didn't know both your mothers wrote textbooks."

"Well my mum is a very good defensive witch, and her mum is a writer, so…" Lisa took the book next, examining it, "but is this really a good defence book?" She asked the Hufflepuff, who nodded.

"It taught me more last year than Quirrel ever managed to, and now that I've had a couple of lessons with him I think it'll probably teach me more than Lockhart ever can as well." She took her book back and found her place again, before putting it back in her bag and bringing out her Astronomy homework, "now, I heard that one of you lot is really good with star charts…"

**AN:-** To anyone who's seen The Howling, you'll know what I'm talking about. Trying to keep suspense in your book/movie/story when everyone already knows exactly what's going to happen doesn't work. No one reads a book called _Wanderings with Werwolves_ expecting to get anything other than werewolves, and maybe some wandering. I get the feeling that Lockhart would be one of those people who isn't a very good writer at all, no idea why. I imagine him to be a sort of pulpy semi-fiction writer, who gets popular because you can read his books without actually having to engage your brain at all. Y'know, sort of like me. I made up the questions for 17, and it just seemed appropriate that he had parts a. and b. for some of the questions.

No one seems to know what Lockhart's first book is, so I made it Holidays with Hags out of a lack of any other input.

The Homorphus Charm. In PoA we are told that there is no cure for lycanthropy, but in CoS Lockhart says he cured a man of it. Since both these things can't be true, we have only a few options:

1. Lockhart lied entirely to make himself out as the hero. He didn't kill the man, he cured him. Obviously when he got back and wrote that book every defensive magician in the world would want to know the secret, so he just never talks about it.

2. He didn't understand the man who he got the story from. The Homorphus Charm does kill, but Lockhart didn't understand that.

3. He did write in the book that he killed the man, but in the retelling to the Gryffindor class he wanted to make himself look more heroic.

4. The Homorphus Charm did exist, known by this poor wizard who Lockhart mind-wiped, and that wizard forgot the secret to curing werewolves forever.

Not looking so good for our flaxen haired hedonist is it?


	7. Chapter 7

**AN:-** I finished my book! Soon to be available on Kindle! What are the ethics on outright advertising where people can buy it?

**Chapter Seven: New Friends, Old Enemies**

September seemed to pass in a flash. One moment she was sitting in the Library trying to get the first pieces of homework done, the next she was following Lisa and Sally on their latest hair-brained scheme.

"Why exactly," she mumbled, trying not to breathe in a mouthful of soot, "do you think there will be a secret tunnel inside this chimney?"

From above her, Lisa heaved herself a few inches higher and dislodged another clump of ash, sending it tumbling down onto Sally, then down onto Lily. Sally sneezed, sending a cloud of dust and grime shooting off her. "Because," Lisa said once they had started moving again, "Fred and George Weasley assured me that halfway between the second and third floor, there is a tunnel that leads out to underneath the stone bridge."

"The stone bridge," Lily grunted as she felt something sharp jab her in the ribs, "is on the other side of the school, and easy to access just by walking there."

"Where's the fun in that?" Lisa put her foot on a more unstable bit of stone, and for a few second wobbled dizzingly above them. "After all," she resumed once she found even footing, "if we're ever caught out late at night again."

"Which we definitely will be," Sally said.

"Then we need to have as many ways back into the castle as possible to avoid Filch."

"Right," Lily heaved herself another half a foot up, nearly colliding with Sally's trainers. "And you say Fred and George Weasley gave you this tip?"

"Yes."

"The two biggest practical jokers in the school."

"Also, yes, but they like me, and they do know all of the secret passageways."

"Besides," said Sally, shaking her head and sending another rain of soot onto Lily's head, "even if we don't find a _secret _secret passageway, we've still found this chimney, so that's an adventure all on its own."

"I just wish our adventures this year featured a little more water slides and broomsticks and a little less me getting covered in ashes."

"This is the first adventure we've had this year," Lisa pointed out.

"I'm just saying," they paused to catch their breath for a moment, "I don't want this to become something we do all the time."

"I think I've found something," Lisa said from above, and immediately her friends were attentive, looking up through the gloom to see what the Ravenclaw was doing. Lisa was prodding at the bricks in front of her, "something's loose here," she said, shoving hard, and an entire section of wall fell through.

"Oops," Lisa ducked down so she was only peering over the edge. After a few seconds she decided that she hadn't broken into a classroom and leaned forwards so she could look into the tunnel she had found. "There actually is a passage here," she said excitedly.

"Well can you climb in?" Lily's arms were shaking with exertion, "some of us are getting tired hanging off the wall."

Lisa pushed herself into the hole, knocking a few bricks down onto her friends, who slid a couple of feet down. Once she was in she turned around and reached a hand down to grab Sally's arm and help her to climb in as well. Lily managed to heave herself up as well and took her friends' hands, letting them haul her into the tunnel.

They lay for a moment and caught their breath, looking around at the passageway they had uncovered. It was tall enough that they would be able to walk normally, and wide enough for all three of them to walk next to each other. "Who's going to _lumos?_" Lisa asked, reaching for her wand.

"Call me paranoid," Lily said, drawing hers as well, "but maybe all of us should do it, just in case."

"Just in case what?"

"Remember last time we went sneaking around on the third floor?"

"Yes, but there was a troll in the dungeons and a priceless magical what-sit on the third floor."

"Still," Lily lit her wand, "alright, let's go."

They followed the tunnel through the depths of the castle, wands lighting the way. The plain stone got very boring to look at after a while, but they carried on. They could hear water rushing through the pipes only feet away, and on the other side the rumble of feet and voices.

"Why aren't they asleep?" Sally asked, "it's after lights out."

Lisa put her ear to the wall and listened, "that sounds like the chess club," she said in disbelief, "but that's on the fifth floor in the west wing…"

"Magic," Lily said dryly, "all purpose solution."

"Yeah, but…" Lisa stepped away from the wall, "I don't even know anymore."

"Come on," Lily said, "we have no idea how long this tunnel goes for."

They walked on.

It took nearly twenty minutes of walking before they reached the end of the tunnel, and when they were there they found that the entrance had been blocked off, just like the other end. "How are we going to get through?" Sally asked, running her hand over the wall.

"Do you know any blasting spells?" Lisa asked the other two.

Sally and Lily both shook their heads, waving their wand-lights around the edges of the tunnel to see if there was any obvious way to open the door. Lily pushed her way around a few stones, but they were solid as well. "We can't be stuck here," Lisa said, "there must be a way out."

She stepped backwards and almost tripped over one of the flagstones. Sally steadied her, then knelt down to examine the stone, "hey guys," she said, "I think this might be the way out."

"What do you mean?"

Sally shuffled forwards and put her whole weight on the stone, which shifted slightly. There was a clank from behind the wall to their left and the three girls stared at each other in excitement. "It'll take all of us," Sally said, standing and pulling her friends on as well. The slab creaked underneath them, then gave out and dropped the extra inch into the floor. There was a ratcheting sound from all around them, and the wall before them slid downwards, revealing a rectangular opening.

"Wow," Sally said, leaning through and looking down, "this is _so_ dangerous."

Lily and Lisa looked past her, and shuddered as they saw that the tunnel had opened up just underneath the stone bridge, over the river that flowed past the school and to the lake. The drop looked like it was at least forty feet, and the only way up or down was an old iron ladder that clung precariously next to them.

"Up or down?" Sally asked, leaning out and testing the ladder.

"I'm thinking ladder or walk back," Lily muttered, trying to suppress a gasp as Sally swung herself out and onto the ladder with the ease of a gymnast.

Lisa smiled at her, "come on, it's no more dangerous than riding a broom," but even she looked nervous as she pulled herself carefully onto the ladder and walked up a few steps to give Lily room to get on. "It's all right," she called down, "it's actually really stable."

Lily took a deep breath and reached out, latching onto the ladder as hard as she could. With both hands on the ladder she took a tentative step and got her foot onto one of the rungs. She had been expecting it to be wet from rain or precipitation, but Lisa had been right, and she was able to get herself on quite comfortably. Trying hard not to look down she scampered up, and was helped onto the stone bridge by her friends.

"So what do you think?" Sally said, sticking her head out over the edge and looking down at the water fifty feet below, "it's not quite as good as the waterslide, but it's still pretty useful."

"I think I'd rather not use it too often if it's all the same to you Sally," Lily said, taking deep breathes to steady her nerves.

"You're not afraid of heights are you?" Lisa asked, also looking over the edge, "I mean, you went really high whenever we were flying."

"It's different on a broom, they feel more stable."

"It's a piece of wood."

"But it's a magic piece of wood."

"You make no sense sometimes," Sally said, pulling back, "it's completely safe."

Lily stayed right where she was, "I think I'll just take your word for it."

Sally skipped over to her friend and hugged her, "don't be afraid of heights."

"I'm not afraid of heights," she mumbled.

"Then don't be afraid of bridges."

"Okay," Lisa came over, laughing, "let's get back inside at some point before midnight, alright?"

They made their way back to the clock tower under the cover of darkness, sneaking through a side door that was usually left unlocked. Once they were inside they made their way through to the grand staircase, watching out for any teachers who might have been on patrol. They were just about to head back to their dorms when they heard a door open above them and dropped back against the wall, Lisa peering out to see who it was.

Harry Potter stumbled out from the direction of Lockhart's office, looking a little dazed and vacant as he started to climb the stairs back to Gryffindor. They waited until he was out of sight and then stepped out and onto the ground floor balcony. "He looked really weird," Sally said, "I wonder what's wrong with him?"

"Didn't he get a detention with Lockhart because of that flying car thing?" The whole school had of course heard about the flying car. Sally thought it was a great story, Lisa thought they had been idiots for not realising that even if they couldn't get to school (no one quite knew why) then Harry Potter's owl probably could, and Lily wondered what Hermione Grangers response to the whole thing had been. "I think I'd look dazed if I had to spend a detention with that idiot," Lisa went on.

"Why are we so worried about Harry Potter?" Lily asked, "it's time for bed."

"Right," Lisa was still looking up the stairs, but as Sally bounded over for her usual goodnight hug the Ravenclaw brought her attention back to her friends, "right, see you tomorrow."

"It's Saturday tomorrow," Lily reminded her, "Quidditch try-outs for Ravenclaw."

"Oh Merlin," Lisa rubbed her forehead, "don't remind me, I've spent all of today trying to forget about that."

"You'll do fine," Lily said, giving her a brief hug as well. "Just don't panic."

"Promise you'll come and watch?"

"Of course we'll be there," Sally said, "that's what friends do."

"Thanks guys," Lisa said, hugging them both. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

The very next morning Sally and Lily gathered a large stack of toast and made their way down to the Quidditch pitch, where the Ravenclaw captain was gathering her try-outs. They could see Lisa standing amongst the other second years, looking small and nervous next to the older years. Lily and Sally positioned themselves in the stands and started in on their breakfast.

"Do you know what position she's going for?" Lily asked as they watched the captain directing the first group of seventh years into the air.

"She didn't say, but I think she'd be a Chaser."

"Is she using a school broom?" Lily said, leaning over and squinting at her friend, who was now looking very queasy as she watched the others flying. "Some of the older years are on really great brooms, that's not fair."

"I suppose her parents wouldn't want to buy her a broom unless she was definitely on the team," Sally said. "It's not like she could just fly it around her village, could she?"

"I suppose not." Lily took a big bite of toast and watched as the seventh years were sent down to the stands.

So it went on, the worst of each of the years being weeded out and sent to sit in the stands with the others. There weren't many watching the trials, mostly the other Ravenclaws, who wanted to know how good their new team was going to be. Finally it was the turn of the second years, the smallest group by far, to fly through the floating hoops that the captain had set up to test how comfortable they were on their brooms.

Lisa was one of the candidates allowed to move on to the next set of trials, which would be for individual positions. The Beaters were up first, and after a few hits from the bludgers it became clear who the worst were. Soon enough they were down to three, two of whom were strong hitters, but a little less accurate, and one who could knock the bats out of the other's hands from across the stadium. They were sent to the stands as well.

Next up were the Chasers, and Lily and Sally cheered as Lisa spiralled into the air with the others. They were given a simple drill, passing the ball around a circle of them in the air, before switching to passing to anyone within the circle while they were in motion. Lisa was doing well, and when the first group were sent back to the stands Lisa was allowed to stay in the air. For the next twenty minutes the captain put them through their paces in the hardest exercises she could think of.

"Why is she spending so long testing the Chasers?" Lily asked Sally, who only shrugged.

"It's all about points," Morag had arrived and planted herself next to the girls, "you can win all your games but still lose the cup because you didn't have a big enough difference between what you scored and what the other side scored."

"I didn't know a lot about Quidditch."

Morag shrugged, "I know a lot about everything."

It didn't sound like she was boasting, it sounded like she actually thought it was true. Lily bit back a comment and focused on the players, who were now racing through another series of hoops at top speed. Lisa was definitely beginning to fall behind now, and some of the older years were beginning to show off their skills, flying upside down and sideways as they wound their way through the course. Sure enough, when the test was over Lisa was one of the students sent over to join the others in the stands.

She dropped down next to Sally, her face flushed and red, and smile ruefully, "I suppose I couldn't keep up forever."

"Never mind Lisa," Sally said buoyantly, "I'm sure you'll be on it next year."

"Thanks Sally," but she still looked despondent.

They watched as the final Chaser selection was made and the Keepers stepped up to begin their part, but Lily was beginning to lose interest. Now that she knew Lisa wasn't going to be on the team she didn't care much about the others. Even though she knew she didn't like her house, she liked the idea of winning the House Cup fair and square, and if Slytherin won the Quidditch Cup then they would earn a lot of points.

And of course, she was adamant that Gryffindor were not going to win again, no matter what bravery Harry Potter and his friends displayed.

Soon enough Ravenclaw had a Keeper, two beaters and three chasers, and was moving onto the trials for Seeker. Lisa leaned back in her seat to watch, and Lily could recognise the signs of disappointment in her friend. Even if she had known logically that other people in Ravenclaw might be better than her at Quidditch, Lisa had still thought it obvious that she would get onto the team. The Ravenclaw girl was used to doing better than other people, even if she didn't mean to, and when she met a challenge she couldn't overcome she sometimes got a little annoyed.

After Ravenclaw had finished their Quidditch trials all of the hopefuls were called back to talk to the captain. Lily and Sally waited, and after a few minutes Lisa walked back over to them, looking at least a little happier with the situation. "I've made the reserve team," she told her friends, "on the condition that I go to the practices with the rest of the team."

"Well that's good news isn't it?" Sally said, "you'll get to practice and maybe you'll get moved up if they need a replacement."

"It's not what I wanted, but it's alright," she said, stretching her arms, "I'm going to go and get changed, you two go on without me." Lily and Sally exchanged a look which Lisa caught, "don't worry about me," she said, "I'm fine."

"Well be quick," Sally told her, then took Lily's arm and started to head back to the castle.

"She's not really as alright as she wants us to think is she?" Sally asked as they walked.

"No," Lily said bluntly. She might not know as much about people and friends as Sally did, but she knew about being outdone at things you thought you were good at. "But she'll get over it, she'll be on the team by the end of the year, I bet you."

"That would be nice."

They tramped on in silence, staring out over the lake. The leaves were falling thick and fast from the trees, covering the ground in wet mulch which clung to their shoes. Lily frowned at it in disgust, but Sally loved it, kicking up great clumps of them and giggling as they crashed down, sending rivulets of water running down Lily's legs. "I love autumn," she said as she did it, "the air's really cold and crisp and the leaves are golden and everything looks really pretty."

"I prefer winter," Lily said, "less people around outside."

"Why don't you like people?"

Lily shrugged, "they don't seem to like me very much."

"Lisa and me like you."

"You're special."

"I know."

**AN:-** As my ideas for the seventh book begin to firm up, I find that introducing these magical passageways and secret tunnels is much more fun. Also, I do think I'm going have my girls being friends with the Weasley twins. Sorry to anyone who finds this a bad plot point.

Not much more to say about this chapter. I quite like having Lily and Sally talk. They seem like the most 'odd' couple out of the three, but whenever I get to writing them they suddenly seem to get along very well. Sometimes characters are strange like that.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN:-** Approaching the end of the pre-written bit. Hopefully do some more writing for this soon.

**Chapter Eight: The Cat on the Wall**

At Hogwarts, Halloween was celebrated with a huge feast, and in Slytherin, Halloween was celebrated by not picking on people in your own house for a night. It usually wasn't a house for solidarity, but every so often it was decided that school events took precedence over in-fighting. For Lily it meant she would get to spend a night eating in peace, surrounded by her house mates, instead of keeping an eye out for anyone throwing food at her, and she had already made plans to sit next to Terence as well.

All in all, as Lily made her way up from the dungeons in her best robes, hat secured to her head with safety pins, she was feeling confident that the night would be a lot of fun. When she saw the decorations she was even more convinced of that. There were pumpkins at least six feet across that stood nearly as tall as some of the first years, and live bats flitted between the candles, which had been enchanted to glow a sickly shade of green. Fake cobwebs were sprinkled liberally around the food, disappearing when someone put a hand through to get what they wanted.

At the head table Dumbledore had let his beard and hair all the way down, spreading them out across his chest and donning a hat with a brim wide enough to cast his face in shadow. Next to him was a staff that looked like it was made from a tree branch with a glowing crystal set in the top. As the students entered he rose and spread his arms wide, revealing that what had looked like simple gray robes shimmered with a thousand different colours. "Welcome students!" He said loudly, "welcome all, sit down and begin the feast, and may I say how splendidly turned out you all are!"

Once Lily was sat down she made her automatic sweep of the hall, spotting Lisa once more talking to the white haired first year girl and Sally chatting animatedly with Susan Bones. Lily quite liked Susan, a fellow Charms enthusiast and a pretty good witch. Smiling to her friends she turned back to Terence, who was settling himself onto the bench.

"Why do you always do that?" He asked as he adjusted his robes.

"Do what?"

"Look around the hall when you sit down. Who are you looking for?"

"My friends," she said.

"Your friends who aren't in Slytherin?"

"Yeah." She said it quietly; looking around the table to make sure no one was listening in.

"You shouldn't be so paranoid," he said, actually waving to a Ravenclaw girl in his year, "most of us have friends in other houses."

"My year don't."

"Your year has a lot more old names than the others," he said, beginning to pile food onto his plate. Lily couldn't understand how boys could possibly eat as much as they did. Terence's plate was invisible under the large pile of food he had heaped onto it, while hers was barely half filled. The plates were huge as well. "When people like Draco Malfoy are telling you not to make friends in other houses, the other pure bloods tend to fall in line," Terence went on.

"But aren't most Slytherins pure blood?"

"Yeah, but we have quite a lot of half-bloods, and most of the old wizarding families don't have that many children, so Slytherin takes in a lot of pure bloods who aren't quite as fixated on that whole blood dominance thing."

"I didn't know there were pure bloods like that."

"Well quite a few of them probably wouldn't like to live around muggles," Terence was turning out to be quite knowledgeable, although Lily supposed he would have to be, what with being in Slytherin for three years. "Some of them have lived in places like Hogsmeade all their life, so they don't know anything about muggles, but that doesn't automatically mean they hate anyone who's not pure blood."

"So wasn't there anyone like that in your year?" She asked curiously.

He shook his head, "no, but the year above me has a Bulstrode and a distant cousin of the Lestranges, so they were truly foul."

Lily ate some potatoes and wondered about what he had said. She had always thought that Slytherin was a house of pure-bloods and nothing but, but she realised now that that had been quite a silly assumption to make. There weren't enough pureblood families left in Britain to give Slytherin ten students every year, and like Terence had said, most of them didn't have many children. Once more she wished that the Sorting Hat could have put her anywhere else.

"You always get the same look on your face when you think about things you don't like," Terence said, breaking into her train of thoughts, "feel like sharing?"

"I just sometimes wish that the Sorting Hat had put me somewhere else. I'm smart, so why wasn't I in Ravenclaw?"

"Because it's about more than being clever, it's about what you do with it." He sighed and set down his cutlery, not meeting her eyes, "I spent a long time wishing I had been Sorted anywhere else, usually after Damian had tried to flush my head down the toilet or something."

"Do you still wish that?"

"Well I kind of snapped near the end of Second Year, blasted a whole group of older years with every curse I could think of, they've kind of left me alone since then." He picked up his fork and started to sift through his peas, "not that I'm suggesting you should do that, but I've actually felt a lot better about it since then. Kind of like I understand why I'm here y'know?" He looked quite embarrassed, so Lily took an extra large forkful of pork and pretended to be concentrating on it.

"So what books have you been reading?" He asked when they had both finished their mouthfuls.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh come on, everyone takes the older years books, just to see if they can do any of the spells in there."

She smiled, "Well I don't know about serious studying, but there are one or two…"

"What like?"

"Well I like the older year Charms books," she admitted, feeling strange about admitting her favourite type of magic to someone else. "I can do a _lapifors_ spell quite well now."

"_Lapifors?_" He sounded impressed, "even I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Well usually things I try and change turn into big balls of fluff instead of rabbits."

"Mine don't last very long," she told him.

"But you can still make actual rabbits?" At her nod he smiled, "you're going to be great when you get older."

She blushed furiously and returned to her parsnips, wishing he hadn't sounded so sincere about it.

* * *

For the next two hours she completely forgot that she was among the other Slytherins. Terence was brilliant company, knowing just what questions to ask to get her to open up, but not pushing so far that she was uncomfortable. She shared the location of some of the secret passages she had found, which absolutely fascinated him, since he said he hadn't ever been able to find one. She kept a few of them back though, feeling like they were special tunnels, just for her and her friends.

Finally the meal was over and the last scrapes of food had been wiped off the golden plates, and they began to file out to return to their dorms. The Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were first out, the Weasleys giving one last laugh to the night when they set off a Doctor Filibuster right in the doorway, delaying the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins while they waited for the sparks to clear. McGonagall could be seen angrily storming to tell them off but since most of the students, even some of the Slytherins, were laughing, Lily didn't think they would get into too much trouble.

They had just started to leave the hall when above them all the students stopped, going silent as well. It was such a rare occurrence at Hogwarts that no one knew quite what to do, several students peering over the edge of the banister to try and get a look at the Ravenclaws who were still only halfway in to the second year corridor. Then the whispering started.

'Oh Merlin, what is it?' 'Is it dead?' 'Who did it?' 'Oh that's horrible.'

Every student in the castle began to shove forwards to get onto the second floor corridor and see what was going on, knocking several younger years aside in their haste. Lily found herself being shoved forwards from behind until she was nearly at the front, and had a perfect view of Harry Potter and his friends standing by a puddle of water next to the girl's toilets. Something had been hung from one of the lamps and writing in some dark red paint had been splashed all over the wall.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE

"Is that blood?" Someone behind her whispered and Lily gagged when she realised that it was. It wasn't like paint at all, sticking to the wall and glistening in the faint light. Someone slipped a hand into hers and she looked back to see Sally, pale faced and shaking. Lisa appeared on her other side, looking sick.

Someone pushed past them to get to the front of the crowd, his blond hair easily recognisable. Draco Malfoy glanced at the message, then at the three Gryffindors, "Enemies of the heir beware!" He said, grinning maniacally, "you'll be next mudbloods!"

There was a surge of angry muttering through the crowd, and several of the Slytherins glared at Malfoy. Lily felt Lisa stiffen next to her, and knew that the Ravenclaw knew what the word meant. Sally was thankfully oblivious, still staring at the cat in horror, "I think that's Mrs Norris," she said softly. The word spread quickly, and soon everyone was whispering her name.

"What's going on here? What's going on?" Argus Filch appeared out of nowhere, shouldering students out of the way. His eyes fell on Mrs Norris and he staggered backwards, a hand going to his face as his mouth dropped. "My cat!" The first one was quiet and scratchy, sounding to Lily like he was trying to hold himself together. "My cat! What's happened to Mrs Norris?" His voice was rising into a shriek now, and as he glared around for the perpetrator his eyes fell on Harry.

"You!" He all but screamed it, and several of the students around him fell back in fear from the wizened old caretaker. "You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you!" He was advancing on Harry with his hands outstretched, looking utterly demented.

"Argus!"

Dumbledore swept through the crowd, the rest of the teachers following him. He went right past the Gryffindors and gently took Mrs Norris from the torch bracket, shielding her from the view of the students, "come with me, Argus." He said softly to Filch, "you too, Mr Potter, Mr Weasley, Miss Granger."

Lockhart appeared out of nowhere, making Lily instinctively duck out of sight behind an older year, "my office is nearest Headmaster," he said excitedly. "Just upstairs," they were already heading that way, "please feel free."

And the group was gone, leaving the students standing in the corridor with nothing but the water and the bloody letters on the wall.

"Come on," someone said in her ear, "let's get out of here." She felt a hand on her elbow, guiding her back down the hall and towards the Slytherin common room. She realised that it was Terence, and shook his hand off, "I'm okay," she said.

"Are you sure?"

They were already outside the Common Room, and she struggled to remember the password, "facta, non verba," she said eventually, and the wall slid open. Terence took her over to one of the sofas and sat down next to her, looking at her in concern.

"Are you sure you're okay?" He asked, "you look very pale."

"I'm fine," she said, rubbing her cheeks to try and get her circulation going. "Really."

"What could possibly do that to Mrs Norris?" He asked.

"Do you think she was killed?" Lily asked.

"Well what other explanation is there?" He said, "she was hanging there stiff as a board, I don't think she was just sleeping."

"Well maybe it was like _Petrificous Totalus,_" she said, "like something that froze her?"

"I don't know," he looked uncertain, "but I think I want to find out."

"How?"

"Well we could start by going through the library and looking for types of spells that could freeze her like that," she thought it was sweet that he was pretending that Mrs Norris could still be alive, even though she could see in his face that he didn't really believe it. "Maybe if we can find out what sort of spell it was then we can figure out what sort of person might have cast it."

"Those sorts of spells would be very hard to perform though, wouldn't they?"

"Exactly," he said, warming to the subject, "so it would have to be one of the more advanced students, and it's probably dark magic as well."

"All the books on dark magic are kept in the Restricted Section though; we'd need a teacher's signature." In the back of her mind Lily was already constructing scenarios about sneaking in, which seemed to her the much more likely choice. She and her friends hadn't explored the library much, and she felt sure that there would be several ways to sneak around inside it. The bookshelves were a maze of tunnels and secret places.

"Well how would we convince a teacher to let us go looking around in there?"

"We could tell them it's for a project."

Lily frowned at that, "the teachers know what work we're doing, so they would know it wasn't one of those projects."

"Well then what do you suggest?"

Lily shrugged, "if it was me, I'd sneak in."

"Just like that? Sneak into the library?" He looked at her like she was crazy, which quite possibly she was, "maybe we could convince Snape to let us go there. He lets Slytherins do anything."

"Not even Snape would let us go wandering around the Restricted Section."

"You're set on this sneaking in idea, aren't you?"

It was true, the thrill at the idea of sneaking in was chasing away her fear at what she had seen, "why," she asked slyly, "are you scared?"

He grinned at her, "trying to manipulate my pride are you Moon?" His smile took the sting out of it, "we'll make a Slytherin out of you yet." He leaned back on the sofa, obviously pleased that he had taken her mind off the cat, "alright then, we'll do it your way. Find a way to sneak us into the Restricted Section and I'll help you look through the books."

"Glad that's sorted," she stood, "and now I really want to go to bed. Hopefully when I wake up the last hour will turn out to have been a bad dream."

Unfortunately, when she woke up the blood was just as real and Mrs Norris was just as frozen stiff. Rumours were spreading around claiming that Harry Potter had killed her for being nosy, which Lily thought was just silly, and of course everyone was trying to find out what the Chamber of Secrets was. Lily had never heard about anything, but she was suddenly remembering a conversation she had had with her parents the year before. They had told her that something had happened shortly before they came to Hogwarts, and it had been when everyone started to really distrust Slytherin.

Because there was another rumour going around that this wasn't the first time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. Draco Malfoy in particular had been heard loudly claiming that the last time a muggle born had actually been killed. Lily decided that she needed to write to her parents and get the full story as soon as possible. She loved puzzles, and whatever had happened on Halloween it was definitely a puzzle.

_Dear mother and father_

_I don't know if you've heard already, but there was an attack at Hogwarts. Mrs Norris, the caretaker's cat, was attacked on Halloween. We still don't really know what's happened to her, but the corridor where she was found had a message written on the wall in blood. It said that the Chamber of Secrets has been opened and enemies of the heir should beware. Malfoy seems to think that enemies of the heir are anyone muggle-born, and he keeps going on about how the Chamber has been opened before._

_Last year you told me about something that had happened before you came to Hogwarts that made everyone hate Slytherin. Was it this? I need to know about the Chamber of Secrets and whether the muggle-borns really are in danger._

_Please write back soon_

_Lily_

**AN:- **I quite like the idea that wizards do sometimes dress up at Halloween. Obviously Dumbledore is dressed as either Gandalf or Merlin.

Terence's story has some basis in my life (as everything I write does) I was bullied, then one day I ended up trying to take on about three older years. Obviously they beat me pretty badly, but I gave them enough bruises that they decided I wasn't worth it.

It strikes me that there are two types of 'secret' passage at Hogwarts. Ones that everyone knows about and uses, like the tapestry that the Gryffindors go down with the missing step, and others that very few people know about, like the ones the Weasleys and Harry and his friends sometimes use.

Yet more of the strange geography of Hogwarts. Moaning Myrtle's bathroom is explicitly on the second floor, the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs must go down to get to their common room. Why would they be in that corridor? Obviously because the other two houses made such a commotion that they all headed that way.

If mudblood is such a terrible word, why does Malfoy suddenly start yelling it in the middle of a corridor? If someone suddenly yelled the 'n' word in the middle of a crowd of black people and white people there would probably be a pretty big reaction.

Personally I'm not a hundred percent sure about the scene between Lily and Terence. The idea was that Lily is trying very very hard to not think about Mrs Norris, and is focusing on breaking in to the library because it keeps her mind occupied. I think it comes off too much like a random change of topic though. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't bear to rewrite it any more times.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN:-**Totally forgot I hadn't uploaded these last two chapters. I'm in the middle of writing Chap 11 now, should be up soon enough

**Chapter Nine: The Chamber of Secrets**

"We need to find a way into the Restricted Section of the library," Lily said as she sat down next to Lisa and Sally on a bench in one of the courtyards.

"Okay," Lisa said without hesitation, "why?"

"I was talking to Terence about what happened to Mrs Norris, and how it might have been some sort of very powerful _Petrificus Totalus,_ so she wouldn't be dead. He said that they'd have books on that sort of advanced dark magic in the Restricted Section, so we need to break in and look through the books."

"Isn't that kind of extreme?" Sally asked.

"I'm very worried," Lily admitted, "Malfoy's been going on and on about how last time this happened someone died."

"Wait, last time?" Lisa looked up in interest, "so he thinks this has happened before?"

"He says his father told him about it."

"Any reason he's lying?"

"Apart from the fact that he hates muggle borns?" Lily shrugged, "he seems sincere enough for me."

Lisa snapped her book shut, "I have some reading to do," she announced, standing, "see you after dinner?"

"Of course," Lily looked at her in confusion, wondering about Lisa's sudden change of mood, but the Ravenclaw didn't say anything else, hurrying off at top speed.

"What was all that about?" Sally asked.

"I have no idea."

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Sally turned to Lily, looking uncharacteristically serious, "so why are you really worried?"

"What?"

"You're worried about something in particular, I can tell."

Lily contemplated the front of her Potions textbook, "it's just what Malfoy said."

"You'll be next mudbloods."

"I didn't think you knew what that word meant."

"One of the older years told me."

"Well yeah, that's why I'm worried."

Sally shuffled closer on the bench and put an arm round Lily's shoulders, "don't be silly." She said.

Lily nudged her friend, "I get worried," she said apologetically, "you're my only friends, I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

Sally didn't say anything, just kept on hugging her.

* * *

The next day they all gathered in the Library, choosing a spot on the second floor that let them look down at the Restricted Section. Lily had decided that the likely route would either be to drop in from above or find a tunnel that led underneath. Any passages that might lead in from the ground floor would doubtless be known about by Madame Pince, but Lily was fairly certain that the upper floors of the library rearranged themselves on a regular basis, so new tunnels could be emerging all the time.

"We need to make a map of Hogwarts," Lisa said absently as she flicked through her copy of _Howarts: A History_ which was spread on the desk in front of her taking up space.

"Why?"

"So we can actually document these secret passages and all the cool things we find."

"Why would we want to do that?"

Lisa glanced up, "did you know that the last official map of Hogwarts is the architect's original designs? It was designed to move around from the very beginning, and no one's really bothered to document it since then. So why shouldn't we have a go?"

Lily considered it as she watched Madame Pince on the floor below, dusting the bookshelves and checking some of the tomes for damage. "I like the idea," she said slowly, "but I'm not sure about the effort we'd have to put in. I mean, the castle is huge, and we have lessons and stuff."

"Well obviously it would take years, but we've got years to explore this place haven't we?" Lisa turned over another page and squeaked.

Sally's head jerked up from her Charms essay, "what?"

"I found the Chamber of Secrets," Lisa said, whispering suddenly. The other two huddled in closer, feeling like they were about to step into some new world of mystery. Lisa leaned close over the book and began to read.

"Although the Founders worked in harmony for many years, seeking out youngsters who were possessed of magic and educating them in the castle, disagreements between the founders were frequent. A rift grew between Salazar Slytherin and his fellows, as to whether the students admitted to Hogwarts should be of purely magical blood, or whether the offspring of muggles would also be allowed."

"Does it say why?" Lily asked, curious about the history of her house, but Lisa only shook her head and went on.

"This rift deepened until a fight between Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin led to the departure of the latter from the school. After this event the founders continued their work without Slytherin, and the fourth founder disappeared from the annals of history."

"Well where did he go?" Sally asked.

"It doesn't say. There's nothing more about Slytherin at all." Lisa turned over the page, "anyway. The myth of the Chamber of Secrets began some time after the death of all the original founders. The story states that Salazar Slytherin had constructed in secret a chamber, accessible only by himself, and his own true heirs. The horror within the Chamber of Secrets could only be unleashed by the true heir, and would then purge the school of all those who were unfit of the privilege of magic."

The three girls looked at each other, all holding their breath in anticipation, as Lisa bent down once more to read, "although the school has been searched many times and no such Chamber uncovered, the myth continues to this day, where most recently it was blamed for the death of a student in 1942."

"The horror within," Lily tried to keep the quaver out of her voice, "what does that mean?"

Lisa flicked ahead another page, scanning for the answer, "of the horror, which this book will not describe, it is said to be a beast of unimaginable terror and fury. It can only be controlled by those in Slytherin's bloodline, and out of this control it is a wild and terrible monster."

After a long silence Lily realised what the book had told them, underneath the hyperbole, "we're not looking for a spell," she said quietly, taking the book from Lisa so she could read the passage, "we're looking for a magical creature, one that can apparently freeze cats."

"There can't be that many creatures with those sorts of powers," Lisa was already pulling out her copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them._ "Although if it did kill her, that will open up the possibilities somewhat."

"She wasn't, uh…" Sally trailed off; looking very much like she didn't want to discuss what was on her mind.

"What?" Lily asked.

"When I was younger I had another pet cat called Tiger, but he was much more violent than Tabby. He used to bring animals to the back door almost every morning; my mum said they were presents for us."

"What does this have to do with Mrs Norris?"

"The animals always looked really horrible; they had blood all over them and ripped off bits of feathers or fur, where Tiger had killed them."

"Mrs Norris was untouched," Lisa realised what Sally had been trying to say earlier, then looked deeply nauseous as she realised what she had said, "that is horrible."

"If Mrs Norris wasn't hurt like that," Lily swallowed down bile at the thought of what that would have looked like, "then whatever froze her, or killed her," she added at Lisa's look, "it did it without touching her."

"Now that will narrow the definition down." Lisa examined the front cover of _Fantastic Beasts,_ then set it to one side, "but I'm not sure I want to go looking for something now."

"So we don't have to sneak into the Restricted Section?" Sally asked, looking more than a little relieved.

"Of course we do," Lily said, "we still have that map to make," she said with a smile, "and there might be really dark creatures that aren't covered in _Fantastic Beasts._"

* * *

Although they were keen to make plans in the library that day, when it came to choosing a date it was another matter. None of them felt like sneaking around the castle quite as freely, and eventually they agreed that they were going to wait and see what happened. Hopefully it would all turn out to be a very mean spirited prank, or a big misunderstanding of some kind.

By the end of the week it became clear that things were very badly wrong though. Although the teachers tried to hide their anxiety, the word quickly spread that even the great Dumbledore had been unable to cure Mrs Norris. Even thinking about magic so powerful that Dumbledore was helpless against it made Lily's head hurt. All her life she had been told that Albus Dumbledore was the most powerful living wizard, and if he couldn't solve it, no one could.

The other rumour going around was much worse. Those who had checked out copies of _Hogwarts: A History_ from the library had read the same story they had, and some of the teachers had been persuaded to give their own versions as well. All of which meant that everyone knew the Chamber was connected to Slytherin. Things had never been worse for Lily. Outside of the house no one spoke to her apart from Lisa and Sally. Even students she might have spoken to before, like Morag or Rachel, the fourth year Hufflepuff that studied with them sometimes, were ostracising her. She knew it was hard for Lisa and Sally as well. When everyone in their house was treating the Slytherins like outcasts, if they were nice to her then their own houses would reject them as well.

In Slytherin the infighting had reached new heights. The accusations flew thick and fast every night, everyone calling for whoever had played the prank to turn themselves in, because they were hurting the reputation of the house with immature games. Malfoy was suggested, but he had a solid alibi. One day Lily walked in to see Terence being beaten by two burly fifth years, who were slamming him up against the bookcase again and again.

"Thought you'd try and get in with the house?" One of them asked as he punched Terry in the gut, "make us think you were one of us?"

"No… idea…" Terry gasped, sagging in his robes.

The other boy punched him on the cheek and Lily ran over, "stop it!" She said, trying to get between the boys.

"Uh oh," the first one laughed, dropping Terry to the floor, "looks like the girlfriend's here."

"She's the one who pals around with that Ravenclaw isn't she?" His mate bent down to examine her face.

"Yeah," the first boy leaned down as well, "I thought you were told to show house spirit?"

"Like beating up your own housemates?" She asked, trying to sound braver than she felt.

The older years sneered, but then someone else stepped next to her, taller and broader than both the fifth years, "that's enough." The newcomer's voice was quiet but firm, and the fifth years didn't challenge him, slinking away to their dorms.

Terry was still panting on the floor, and as Lily knelt down to try and help him the tall boy knelt as well, "that was very brave," he said.

"Thanks," she looked up to see a very handsome older year she vaguely recognised. She thought he might be one of the sixth or seventh years. He was like the image Lockhart tried to portray, with high cheekbones and an almost feminine jawline that only made him look more beautiful. His long blonde hair flopped artfully across his brow and his blue eyes were captivating. He looked almost like the boy from the old pictures she had found.

"David Bower-Hayne," he said, holding out his hand. She shook it briefly and returned to helping Terry sit up.

"You didn't have to help," he gasped at her.

"Yes I did," she said, touching a finger to his cheek, where a spectacular bruise was already erupting. "You should see Madame Pomfey about that," she told him

"No," he said, trying to shove himself up but stopping and clutching his stomach, "I'm not going to the hospital wing," he wheezed.

"You should," David said, examining him, "it looks like they really did some damage."

"I'm fine," Terry protested, trying to look casual and failing miserably, "really."

"Well if you're determined to be stubborn, I'll leave you to your friend." David stood and nodded to Lily, "it was nice meeting the two of you."

"Likewise," Lily said, turning to sit next to Terry as well.

The two of them sat in silence for a while, Terry wincing occasionally and rubbing his stomach. Eventually he muttered, "thanks."

"You're welcome," Lily said, "it's what friends do."

"They've been accusing the half-bloods all morning; it was only a matter of time."

"Well they shouldn't be. The whole of the rest of the school is against us, we can't start fighting now."

"This is what Slytherins do best," he managed a bitter choking laugh, "we all know it's got to be someone in Slytherin, and no one wants to get blamed."

"Do you know what happened the last time the Chamber was opened?" She asked.

"A girl died, but apart from that I don't know anything. I did read a newspaper article that said someone had been arrested, but it never said who."

"Well at least it confirms everything else I've found out so far."

"Have you got into the Restricted Section yet?"

"No, but we did find out that it might not have been a spell."

"What do you mean?"

"Haven't you read _Hogwarts: A History?_"

"It was boring," he said weakly.

"The Chamber of Secrets is the home of some sort of magical creature that can only be controlled by the heir of Slytherin."

"So," he seemed to be feeling a little less battered, pushing himself up and thinking, "either the Chamber really has been opened, and someone has unleashed this creature, which means it has to be a Slytherin."

"Why?"

He gave her a look, "Slytherin's heir? He'd be in Slytherin, absolutely."

"Oh."

"Or, someone knew about the legend, and wrote that message on the wall so that everyone would be looking for the Chamber, when really it was a student."

"That still seems like something that someone in Slytherin would do," Lily pointed out, "all that plotting and deception?"

"Well, yeah," he drooped a little against the wall, "but still, it narrows things down."

"Yeah." Lily's mind was racing. They needed to know who Slytherin's heir was. But finding someone who was related to a wizard who had died a thousand years ago was an even more impossible challenge than finding one creature in the whole library of books.

"It could be Malfoy," Terry said.

"What?"

"The Heir of Slytherin."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What?"

She nodded to where Malfoy was just sitting down with his cronies. "For one thing, if he had even the slightest inkling of who did this he'd either have outright told everyone, or he'd be hinting about it. Also, his family are one of those old wizarding families; they've kept track of their whole genealogy since William Malfoy in 340 A.D."

"How could you possibly know that much about the Malfoy's?" Terry asked.

"We used to go around their house when I was younger, one of his favourite past times was taking all of us round the room with his family tree in it. If Salazar Slytherin was on it, he never told me, and don't you think he would have?"

"Huh," Terry watched as Malfoy started to talk about what he thought should be done about the attacks again. "You know, I can't imagine him living in something as simple as a house."

"Well, they call it Malfoy Manor, and it's a bit bigger than a simple house." She hated the place, big and black and evil. The wrought iron gates were bad enough, but actually having to walk through them and up through the maze of hedges to the actual house… She shivered even thinking about it.

Terry spoke again, breaking into her train of thought, "So if it's not Malfoy, then who is it?"

"No idea," Lily admitted, "but whoever they are, surely they won't be stupid enough to do it again? All of the teachers must be just waiting for something to happen now, and if it does they'll catch whoever it was at once."

"I hope so," Terry said, pushing himself to his feet, still holding his stomach and grimacing, "thanks again, really."

"No problem," Lily stood as well, gathering up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder, "us outcasts have got to stick together, right?"

He smiled at that, "I guess we do," he patted her on the shoulder and walked off to his dorm.

Lily stood in place rubbing the spot he had patted and smiling, then went to her own dorm as well.

**AN:-** Looking back it's painfully obvious I was running out of ideas at this point, and I think the writing suffers for it. I was writing my original novel ( Path-of-Heroes-Journeys-ebook/dp/B00983NQOC) and focusing very heavily on that. Normally fanfic is a way of distracting myself from writer's block, but it was quickly becoming the cause of it.

Some nice Lily/Sally at the beginning (friendship not slash) Like I say, it was nice to see that there was a friendship naturally emerging between them, because I'd worried that Lisa and Sally would be obvious friends, Lily and Lisa would be obvious friends, but then Lily and Sally would seem contrived. Personally I don't feel like I was forcing them to be friendly. Sally is a naturally comforting person, Lily needs friends.

The map of Hogwarts. Yeah I went there. They're going to make a map of Hogwarts, or at least they're going to try. It just made sense after all the adventuring I was having them do that the thought of making a map would appeal to them. For Lisa it's about knowledge, for Sally adventure and for Lisa it has direct practical application.

It always seemed obvious to me that the Slytherins would know Malfoy wasn't the Heir. They might however keep up appearances that it was him just for giggles. I don't like the end bit at all though. Badly written, far too blunt about the story and just not very good writing all around.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN:-**As the fates had it I ended up with The Rogue Bludger Chapter being the same Chapter number as it is in the original book. Made me smile when I noticed.

**Chapter Ten: The Rogue Bludger**

Over the next fortnight the terror at Mrs Norris' condition began to dim as anticipation for the first Quidditch match of the season began to build. Once more it was Slytherin vs Gryffindor, and both the houses had very different reasons to be excited. Gryffindor were all set to pull forward in the House Cup if they could manage a win, and Harry had yet to let them down, whereas Slytherin were convinced that their new brooms and Seeker were going to give them an advantage no one would be able to beat.

The day of the match dawned and every Slytherin gathered in the Common Room to watch their team leave for breakfast, several of them applauding. Lily stood next to Terry and frowned as Malfoy flashed them all a big grin on his way out of the door. "I hope Potter knocks him off the broom," she muttered to her friend, who grinned.

Lily decided that rather than eating in the Great Hall she would collect some toast and take it out to the stands. However on her way up she was intercepted in the Entrance Hall by Lisa and Sally, who both had their own stacks of toast wrapped up in napkins. "Come on," Lisa said, nudging her out of the door.

Outside they were immediately reminded that it was November, as the air hit them cold and stiff. Lily shivered and pulled her robes tighter, wishing she had opted to wear one of her muggle jackets. Up ahead of them the Gryffindor team was just disappearing into their changing room. "What are their chances?" Lisa asked.

Lily shrugged, "I'm not sure. I haven't actually seen the Slytherin team practice, but I hear those brooms are incredible, and Malfoy might not be too bad. The way he talks about it he's been on a broom since he was four, so he has to be reasonably good."

"Gryffindor came pretty close last year," Lisa pointed out, "if Harry hadn't been in the hospital wing then they might have beaten Ravenclaw last year."

"Really?"

Lisa nodded, "the team were talking about it when I was at training. They said that they were really worried last year that he might just give Gryffindor the edge they needed to beat us."

"What's it like being on the Ravenclaw team?" Sally asked.

"A lot of hard work. We train twice a week, and we train hard. I think the only team working harder is probably Gryffindor, but then Wood has always been a bit mad about his training schedule. We've got a new Seeker as well, a third year who was on the reserves last year. I think most people spend a year on the reserve team, then get moved up in their second year, if they practice hard enough."

"So you're going to be a Ravenclaw Chaser next year?" Lily asked, "that's fantastic."

Lisa's eyes glinted, "I'm going to be a Ravenclaw Chaser by the end of this year, then it'll be fantastic."

Lily decided it wasn't wise to argue with Lisa when she had her determined face on. At times like that she would have given the most hardened Slytherin a run for their money in terms of ambition. Instead she led the way up to the stands on the Ravenclaw side. The year before she had been able to hide almost unseen amongst the other first years, but now she was a second year she knew it would be difficult. More people knew she was really in Slytherin now.

Thankfully, several Hufflepuffs had apparently decided to come and visit their friends in Ravenclaw, so she didn't feel quite as isolated, and Lisa was dragging them over to where a blonde haired first year was examining the bench she was sitting on. As they sat Lily realised that it was the same white haired girl she had seen Lisa speaking to at breakfast. "Sally," Lisa said, "you absolutely have to meet Luna Lovegood, she's a first year."

"Hello," Luna said in a vague sort of voice, "I hope you'll excuse me, I think there might be something wrong with this bench."

"What?" Asked Sally, sliding down to sit next to Luna.

"I think it may have been infected with eachy."

"Eachy?" Lily raised an eyebrow and looked to Lisa, who was grinning from ear to ear.

"They live in swamps," Luna explained patiently, as one would to a small child, "but when swamp wood gets used to make chairs they make those chairs uncomfortable to sit on."

"Yes," said Lily, "and they don't exist."

"Oh but they do," Luna said, directing Sally to start looking along her own patch of bench, "and this bench is so hard, I'm absolutely certain it has at least two, maybe more."

"Uh," Lily sat, at a loss for anything else to do, "how do you know they exist?" She asked.

"Well my father once showed me a chair which had had an eachy taken out of it, and he said that before it had been uncomfortable to sit on, then when he took it out it was comfortable to sit on."

"Did he hold on to the eachy?"

"That would be barbaric," she was in the process of rubbing a knot in the wood, "he released it back into the swamp."

"Then how do you know…"

"Don't even try," Lisa whispered in her ear, "I spent half an hour trying to tell her that nargles didn't exist, and she absolutely wouldn't accept it."

"How is she in Ravenclaw?" Lily whispered back.

"She's a brilliant witch apparently. I heard Flitwick singing her praises the other day."

"But she's so…" Lily let her neck go slack, dropping her head onto one shoulder.

"She can hear very well as well," Luna was now staring at the two older girls, her large round eyes examining them as closely as she had the bench.

Duly chastised, Lily returned to her toast, watching as Sally and Luna continued their examination of the bench. The stands began to fill, the other second year Ravenclaws milling in around them. When Morag sat right behind them Lily tried to make herself as small as possible, hoping that the girl might not notice her if she kept quiet. Thankfully, Morag was already involved in a discussion with Terry Boot about their Potions homework, and didn't seem to notice any of her year mates.

Michael Corner sat down in front of them, looking back at Sally and Luna, "wrackspurt?" He asked Lisa, who shook her head.

"Eachy," she replied.

"Eachy?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Later."

"Okay."

He turned back round, leaving Lily staring at Lisa, "what?" The Ravenclaw asked.

"Are there just too many words in normal conversations for you?"

"Michael isn't much of a talker."

"Of course," Lily said, "isn't much of a talker," she mumbled into her toast.

"Don't mumble," Luna said suddenly, jerking her head up from the bench, "if you mumble then ratatoskrs will nibble your ankles whenever you go outside."

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, "what are ratatoskrs?"

"Well they look like squirrels, but they don't like people who say bad things, so whenever you mumble they come and nibble you to stop you from saying bad things."

"Yeah Lily," Lisa said softly, "stop mumbling."

Lily buried her head in her robes, trying to keep from laughing out loud. Thankfully, before she had to think of anything else to say Lee Jordan was turning on his mic and beginning the match.

"Hello and welcome to the first game of the season, Gryffindor facing Slytherin, who are introducing their new Seeker Draco Malfoy!" As he said it the Slytherins marched onto the field to the cheers of the crowd. The Gryffindors had been booing ever since Malfoy's name was mentioned, but when Lee announced, "and the Gryffindor line up, staying the same as last year, led by captain Oliver Wood!" The Gryffindor side of the pitch exploded into cheers.

Oliver Wood and Marcus Flint met in the middle of the pitch, shaking hands while glaring into each other's eyes, and then stepped back to mount their brooms. Madame Hooch released the balls, and the teams swooped into the air.

Right from the off it became clear that Slytherin were going to be hard to beat. They had the Quaffle in hand at once, and before most of the crowd could even see it happen they had shot it past Wood in goal. The clanger sounded and the Gryffindors tried to get back into formation. Before they could even attempt their own play Slytherin had possession again and were flanking the other chasers. Fred and George seemed a second behind with the bludgers, hitting nothing but empty air while the Slytherin beaters were able to out manoeuvre the dense black balls and fire them at key Gryffindors.

One of the Gryffindor Chasers ploughed into the ground trying to avoid both bludgers being shot at her at once, and the second veered helplessly into the stands as she overshot the Slytherin chasers in a futile attempt at a tackle. Wood was on form though, and accounted for the Slytherins' increased speed easily, blocking their next attempt.

Undeterred, the Slytherins continued trying, their superior speed making it impossible the Gryffindors to even get close to the Quaffle. Fred and George seemed utterly flummoxed, their shots going wild and even their attempts to get to the bludgers failing as the Slytherins overtook them to score their own hits. Only the efforts of Wood kept the score from rising any further, and for the first time Lily realised what a truly brilliant keeper he was.

He covered the three hoops with everything he had, sweeping from one to the next as the Slytherins tried in vain to get past him. At one point he leapt off his broom to block one shot, trusting that it would catch him on his way down. He came down heavily on it and hauled himself backwards as Marcus Flint made another attempt, this one slipped through his fingers into the far-side hoop and the score was twenty to nothing.

Gryffindor managed to grab the Quaffle and sped up the pitch with it, but the beaters were on them, and suddenly Fred and George seemed to have completely left the field. One of the Gryffindor girls made it right to the end of the pitch and was lining up her shot when a bludger smacked her square in the back and sent her spiralling to the dirt. "What happened?" Lily asked.

In answer, Lisa grabbed her arm and pointed skywards, where Potter was surrounded by the Weasley twins. A bludger seemed to be looping them, coming for attacks and being knocked aside, only to swing back around and try again.

"It's after him!" Someone said from behind them.

"It's a rogue bludger," said another, sounding almost admiring, "I didn't think Slytherin had that much skill."

High above one of the three managed to signal a time out, and the Gryffindor team flew in to land. Rain was beginning to fall thick and fast from the sky, obscuring the view from the stands as the Gryffindor team clearly argued about something. "What can they do?" She asked no one in particular."

"Forfeit the match," Morag said behind her, "either that or play with the rogue bludger."

"He won't forfeit," said Luna airily, seemingly more interested in the shapes the rain made as it hit her hand.

Sure enough, a second later the Gryffindor team were back in the air to jeers from the Slytherin side of the crowd. In response the Gryffindors struck up the cheering, joined swiftly by Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw until the stadium shook with the stamping of feet and clapping of hands. Whether it did Potter any good was questionable, as he was in his own world, spinning and twisting nearly fifty feet above the ground to avoid the bludger. Malfoy had risen up to join him, clearly intent on mockery, and the Slytherins speed was beginning to really tell on the Gryffindors.

Lily had seen a few Quidditch matches, but she hadn't even heard of the sort of goalkeeping Oliver tried. He used every part of his body, including one hit to the head that sent him reeling into a post. He slammed his broom in the way, took a bludger to the chest and powered through it to try and catch the Quaffle, but he didn't stand a chance. Every time it looked like Gryffindor might have a chance the Slytherins were there, every time it seemed the onslaught on the goal was over someone flew up from below with another try.

The points pulled ahead and Lily couldn't bear to watch anymore. The Quaffle had barely left the Gryffindor half of the field, and Wood was visibly exhausted, sagging on his broom as he tried to pull himself up and save just one more. Searching for something else to look at, Lily's eyes locked on Potter as he twirled in mid-air, the bludger tugging at his robes as it went by. Malfoy threw back his head in laughter, and Potter stopped dead in the air, staring at the blonde head.

_What's he doing?_ Lily wondered, shaking Sally and Lisa to make them pay attention as well. As they watched the bludger came in for another pass and slammed into him. A gasp went through their little group as Potter reeled in the air, somehow righting himself and rocketing at Malfoy.

"He's lost his mind!" Morag yelled.

"He's seen the Snitch!" Lisa shouted back.

The cry went through the crowd, _Potter's seen the Snitch!_ And then a yell as his hand came off his broom and grabbed at something in the air. His right arm, the one the bludger had hit, was trailing behind him uselessly, and he couldn't quite get his left arm back on the broom properly. He nosedived at an alarming speed, drawing gasps and shouts from the students, and only at the last second did he manage to pull up, turning a collision into a grind along nearly ten feet of pitch, grass and mud being thrown up in his wake.

He fell off the broom somewhere along the way, and every eye turned to him as he held up his left arm, which was very clearly wrapped around a glint of gold. Madame Hooch blew the whistle and immediately had to pull to one side as the rogue bludger shot past her, still intent on smashing Harry's face in. He seemed to have fallen unconscious though, and it was only the swift action of Angelina Johnson, who managed to get both hands onto the rogue bludger, that stopped him from having his skull cracked open.

Even though the match was over, the students were slow to go down onto the pitch, watching in amazement as George and Fred came over to take control of the bludger, which was still trying to evade them and reach its target. The Gryffindors were first on the scene, followed by the Ravenclaws, who were in a closer stand. Everyone was shoving forwards to get a look at Potter, and above all the voices could be heard one very distinctive noise.

"Doesn't know what he's saying!" Lily couldn't believe what she was hearing, actually starting to push her way between the older years to make sure her ears weren't deceiving her, "not to worry Harry, I'm about to fix your arm."

_Oh no._

She found herself next to Oliver Wood, who was looking somewhere between exuberant and concerned. He made a path she could follow through the ranks of students, and they arrived just in time to hear Harry asking about the Hospital Wing.

"He really should professor," Wood said next to her. She hadn't ever appreciated quite how tall he was. She barely came up to his chest, and his arm was probably as wide around as her whole head. "Great capture Harry, really spectacular, your best yet I'd say."

Lockhart wasn't taking no for an answer though, rolling up his sleeves and drawing his wand, "stand back," he advised, and Lily took the advice, dropping back at least three rows of people. She barely heard Harry protesting whatever was about to happen, but the next second Lockhart said something and the crowd recoiled in horror.

From up ahead Lily heard Sally's very distinctive gasp, and the sound of an old fashioned camera clicking away. She pushed forwards next to a little first year who was taking pictures. Harry Potter was lying on the ground with Lockhart standing over him making weak justifications. The Gryffindor Seeker's arm was hanging limply in his sleeve, but it wasn't limp like the bone was broken, it was just… limp.

She realised what had happened and gagged, clapping a hand to her mouth. The bones in Potter's arm had been removed, not fixed. As his team helped him up and led him away she watched McGonagall march up to Lockhart and begin to deliver an angry rebuke to Lockhart, most of which was hidden behind her accent, which had gotten much stronger in her anger, and the speed with which she was speaking. It was something about stupidity and students' welfare and proper authorities. Lily decided that it probably wasn't meant for students' ears and hurried away.

Lisa and Sally caught up with her at the steps, "why is it," Lisa panted as they made their way up the grand staircase, "that whenever Potter plays something dangerous happens?"

**AN:-** Loony Luna Lovegood. Great character, but a little bit special...

Basically I wanted to really emphasise the left alone, isolated crazy in her early on. By the time we meet her in Book 5 she's already had three years to integrate and she's still nutty as a DIY shed. All indications are that before Hogwarts she was basically kept isolated at home for nearly 11 years with her father, so I think there would be pronounced eccentricites and idiosyncracies. And yes, Lisa is being mean here. All of the crazy things she talks about are either from JK, or from popular mythology (eachy and ratatoskrs)

Lily has a bit of a crush on Terence Higgs, and Lisa and Michael have got something going on... Maybe. If I decide to follow those plot threads through to the end. A lot of this is seeding the work with as many potential Chekhov's Guns as i can. Some will go off later, others will go unfired and forgotten. It's the perk of writing without a plan is that stuff can just fall into place.

More odes to Oliver Wood. How's that crush going Lily?


	11. Chapter 11

**AN:-** Hopefully this will end the 'badly written stuff I don't like' portion of the story. apologies for making you all sit through the last three chapters. I promise I'll be better.

**Chapter Eleven: The Second Attack**

Her parent's response arrived early the next morning. She read it over breakfast, sipping at a glass of orange juice and trying to wake up enough to take in what it was saying.

_Dearest Lily._

Her mother always began the letters. Her handwriting reflected her person, delicate and neat, but made with a strong hand and constant strokes.

_What you must understand is that it was a very distrustful time. There was a war being fought both in the muggle world and ours. At the same time there was a monster attacking people at Hogwarts, and many people believed it to be a monster from Slytherin. Several people were petrified by it, and one girl died. The culprit they eventually arrested was not from Slytherin, but the stain remained upon our house, not his._

_Things are very different now. Dumbledore is a much more powerful wizard, and the world has moved on. You shouldn't be worried for your friend (yes, I know that's what you were really asking) I know it is frightening, but as long as you do what your teachers tell you to and stay safe then you should be fine._

_Love always, Mother._

**Lily.**

Her father wrote second, and his hand resembled a printing press. His message was also a lot more worrying.

**Your mother doesn't know that I'm writing this, but you have to know exactly what is going on. If the Chamber of Secrets has been opened, then you have to be careful. Do not leave the house after nightfall, do not go searching in dark corners of the castle, do not try and investigate this. Dumbledore will keep the castle safe. We will see you at Christmas.**

**Father.**

She took a deep breath and put the letter down, finishing off her orange juice and standing quickly. She barely registered the Gryffindors, who were all talking in hushed voices and looking gaunt. The year before there had been celebration the morning after Gryffindor won, but the energy seemed to have been sucked from the Great Hall, students whispering to each other as the teachers exchanged dark looks.

"Haven't you heard?" Terry said as he slid into the seat next to her. Opposite them Kayvan sat down as well, his face ashen.

"Heard what?"

"One of the Gryffindors was attacked last night," Terry said, casting a glare up the table, "he's lying in the hospital wing. Petrified, just like Mrs Norris."

Lily felt like her stomach was sinking into her shoes, "who?"

"One of the first years."

As Terry and Kayvan started talking about who could have done it Lily's breakfast made a spirited escape attempt. She held a hand over her mouth and stared at her plate, unable to even imagine how the Gryffindors had to be feeling. As she looked over several of the youngest students looked almost in tears. She looked to the teachers' table instead, but found little comfort there. Dumbledore looked graver than she had ever seen him, and McGonagall actually looked a little red-eyed.

By Monday morning the entire castle looked different. First years moved in packs from lesson to lesson, and for most houses an unofficial buddy system was in place. It was rare to see even a Slytherin walking the halls without a companion, and the students spent most of their time in the common rooms or their lessons.

The attack had had a very different effect on Lisa though, galvanising her into new action. She convinced Lily and Sally to meet her in the library on Thursday after their lessons were finished and, keeping an eye out for Madame Pince, she outlined the plan of action.

"We're going to sneak into the Restricted Section," she told them, "tonight."

"Tonight?" Sally asked with a quaver in her voice, "as in, after lights out?"

"Yes," Lisa said with a gleam in her eye. "This obviously isn't a prank; this could be the real monster from the real Chamber. The teachers are scared as well."

"And you think the best option is for us to sneak into the Restricted Section and find out what this thing is?" Lily asked, "you don't think one of the teachers knows a little more about magical creatures than we might?"

"Professor Sprout was telling us about how the Mandrakes can restore people who have been petrified," Lisa said, "and she was saying that it was the best way to cure Mrs Norris and that first year boy. That means we're looking for a monster that can petrify people. There must be something in one of the books in the Restricted Section."

Remembering her father's letter, Lily couldn't help but feel anxious, "I'm not so sure about this," she told her friend, "this thing has only attacked after dark so far. Maybe it's not such a good idea to be out of our dorms after lights out."

"Look," Lisa said, leaning forwards and lowering her voice, "whatever this thing is, it seems to be able to attack anywhere. Mrs Norris was in a corridor on the second floor, that Gryffindor was in a stairwell on the fifth. What's to stop it coming in to one of the dorms?"

Sally shivered from head to toe and hugged herself, looking absolutely terrified. Lily went over and put an arm around the girl's shoulders, shooting Lisa a reproachful glare.

"I'm sorry," Lisa said, "but it's true. This has to be stopped as soon as possible, and we might be able to find the answers tonight if we just look for them."

Even as she comforted Sally, Lily suddenly realised why Lisa was pushing so hard. The Ravenclaw might have been better at hiding it, but she was just as scared as any of them. And from the way she kept looking at Sally Lily knew that she was just as worried about their friend being one of the probable victims. She managed to awkwardly steer Sally over to Lisa and pulled the other girl into their hug. The three of them stood there, holding each other and trying not to cry, until eventually Lily nodded, "alright," she said, "tonight."

* * *

Sneaking out had become a lot harder since the attacks began. For one thing all the students were now more inclined to stay up late talking about the attacks, and the teachers were making much more frequent patrols of the castle. It was nearly midnight before Lily could even sneak out of her dorm, and then she had to dodge from curtain to curtain in order to leave the common room unnoticed. The moment she was in the dungeons she almost ran right into Professor Snape, who was billowing around and grimacing at shadows.

In the entrance hall she used one of her favourite passages, a tunnel which led right to the third floor, in order to avoid Flitwick, who seemed to be guarding the Grand Staircase. From there it was a simple matter to duck behind a tapestry and vault onto a small balcony that let her into the library, where Lisa was already waiting.

"It took you long enough," the Ravenclaw whispered. She looked nervous, and was jumping at shadows, "I'm starting to think this wasn't such a good idea."

"Really?" Lily muttered, scanning for any sign of Sally, "you're thinking this now?"

"It's dark and creepy and I don't like it."

"Well it's a good thing I'm a Slytherin," Lily said with false bravado, "we eat dark and creepy for lunch."

Lisa frowned at her, "not for breakfast?"

Lily shrugged, "for breakfast we eat healthily."

That made Lisa smile, which was at least an improvement on terrified. At that moment Sally arrived, sliding through a door and shutting it carefully behind her. All three of them lit their wands and made their way quickly into the main library, not wanting to waste any time.

Lily had underestimated just how scary the library could be at night. In the shadows cast by their wands every stack of books became a crazed stalker ready to spring; every step ladder a gigantic spider waiting to scuttle toward them. And then there was the endless creaking groan from deep within, as though the shelves were breathing, and every page in the mighty room knew there was an intruder present. The library had always been welcoming, but now Lily wondered if she would ever feel welcome there again.

They made their way onto the second floor and started over towards the balcony overlooking the Restricted Section. Lily saw movement from the corner of her eye and turned, letting out a tiny shriek and jumping back into her friends. As they crashed to the floor they all turned their wands towards the source of Lily's terror, finding it was only a mirror. But Lily was sure that what she had seen hadn't been her own face looking back at her. In fact she was quite sure the face she had seen had been dead.

By the time they reached their destination their nerves were in tatters, and they had long before clustered together so as to feel human contact and remind themselves they weren't alone. Shadows moved amongst the stacks, and Lily was sure some of them were shaped like humans, still browsing the books they had read in life.

"Okay," Lisa said, and it was barely a breath, "we need to find a way down."

Lily lent over the edge, staring down at the locked door to the Restricted Section. It had a low roof which would prevent them from simply lowering themselves in, but she had started to suspect that Hogwarts itself would come to the aid of people trying to help it, and as she looked she could suddenly make out a small opening in the roof of the Restricted Section.

"I think I see a way in," she said, "but we might have to climb to it."

"We won't be able to hold our wands," Sally squeaked.

Lisa had joined Lily, and she now swung herself out over the drop, clinging tightly to the balcony with one hand and sticking her wand in her mouth with the other, "'ike 'ish," she mumbled, edging a little further along to give Lily room to follow her.

After a moment's hesitation, Lily jumped over as well, clenching her wand between her teeth and nodding to where Sally could join them. The Hufflepuff squirmed, looking around at the shadows, then clambered over to join them.

They shimmied along the edge of the balcony, trying hard not to look down, and when they reached the end one by one swung onto the low roof, crouching low and scrabbling forward on their hands and knees. Lisa scurried along to the edge of the hole and looked down into the Restricted Section, "there's a table down there," she said, "lower me down."

Lily and Sally both took her arms and lowered her until she was able to drop safely onto the table, scattering a pile of parchments as she wobbled dangerously on the very edge. "Okay," she whispered up when she had caught her balance, "who's next?"

Lily ended up going next, lowered by Sally and dropped down for Lisa to catch her and steady her. Finally Sally jumped down into their waiting arms and the three girls were in the Restricted Section.

"Okay." There was no one around, but Lisa was still whispering. Something about the place made all of them feel like they should stay quiet. Shadows from the small slit windows made it seem that the walls were caving inwards, threatening to bury them in a cascade of books. "Find books about creatures, there's got to be something."

"We can't just take down every book about magical creatures," Lily hissed back, "we need a plan."

"We know it can freeze things," Lisa said, "and we know it's so horrible that Hogwarts a History can't talk about it."

Lily examined a book which looked like the spine had been dipped in blood, "I think most of the _books_ here would fit that description, let alone the contents."

"Whatever we're looking for can we do it quickly?" Sally's voice was quavering, and when Lily looked she saw that he Hufflepuff was visibly shaking.

"Choose at random," Lisa said, "with luck we'll find something..."

Nearly two hours later Lily looked up from the book she was reading. "Can we please go?" She said, "we're not going to find anything and I'm probably not going to be able to sleep for a week."

"There has to be something," Lisa said frantically. She had been tearing through books at top speed, and had covered at least twice as many as Lily and Sally. Lily had never seen her friend move with such drive, even when she was struggling to help Ravenclaw win the House Cup.

"Why are you so determined?" Sally asked in a very small voice.

"Because there has to be something we can do,"" Lisa sounded desperate and tired, "because you're muggle born, and half of my friends in Ravenclaw are muggle born, and what happens if there's another attack?"

Lily had no idea what to say, and Sally looked shocked as well. They sat there, staring at each other over the dusty old table, and suddenly realised that Lisa had been nearly shouting when she finished. There was a rustling noise coming from all around them, but there was no wind, and a deep groan could be heard, growing louder and louder until the floor shook beneath their feet.

"Run!" Lisa said, bolting out of the chair and sprinting for the door, Lily and Sally half a step behind her. They crashed against the locked door and fumbled for a moment with wands until Sally got there first.

"Alohomora!"

The door sprung open and they tumbled out onto the library floor, hearing the cracking of spines and the flurry of pages turning all around them. There were shadows at the edges of the stacks, shaped like people and growing more distinct with every passing second. Lily led them out of the main door and up three flights of stairs before they stopped running, hearing sounds beneath them as the teachers ran to the library, clearly terrified that there had been another attack.

They collapsed outside the Ancient Runes classroom, panting and leaning against each other for support. The corridor was deserted but brightly lit by moonlight streaming in through the ceiling high windows. They sat with their backs to the wall, Sally half-draped across Lily and Lisa on Lily's other side, hugging herself.

"That was not fun," Lily said eventually.

"No," Sally mumbled, lifting her head up a little, "I say we don't do that again."

"I agree," Lisa said, "I'm sorry I dragged you along."

"Don't be," Lily said, nudging her friend gently, "I'd still rather have done that than spent the night in the Slytherin Common Room."

"It can't be very pleasant right now," Lisa guessed.

Lily shook her head, "I found a group of older years beating up one of my friends the other day. Everyone's turned on each other, it's really nasty."

"I hope they find whoever or whatever's doing this," Sally said, picking herself up properly and wandering over to a window, "I want Hogwarts to be fun again."

"Now that I definitely agree with," Lisa joined her at the window and they stared at the lake.

Lily stayed against the wall, not trusting her legs to support her they were shaking so hard. "All I want is to go to sleep, and maybe have a week where we don't face life threatening peril."

**AN:-** A little bit to talk about this time round.

1. Why they go searching, why they don't find it etc. They are bright girls, all three of them, and the story of the Chamber is not exactly secret. Hermione outright says it can be found in Hogwarts: A History, and the girls always make sure to keep their copies of H: AH close. Armed with that information they then jump to conclusions regarding the exact nature of the beast, which is why they go searching in the RS instead of the main library where Hermione obviously found it.

2. Parents' Responses. It is very hard to date these stories sometimes. Lucius Malfoy obviously knew a lot about the Chamber, but he can't have been at school with Riddle, because he was a prefect when Snape was at school. Snape went to school roughly 1971, making Lucius born in the early 50s, after Riddle had already left. My parents are about the same age as Snape et al (remember last year Mrs Turpin said she was an older year when the Marauders were around) but I reckon that the Chamber is something that everyone in Slytherin probably talked about all the time, so they'd know the story and the history.

3. The mood of the castle. In the book it is said that nervousness becomes panic only after the Justin/NH Nick attack. So right now things are still nervous, but again my girls are smart and a bit too creative and adventurous for their own good, so Lisa is imagining the worst but not yet quite comprehending that it is a very real possibility. They will get more cautious.

Other than that, same old same old really. Please read and review, I'd like to think this story is loved. Or at least not actively disliked.


	12. Chapter 12

**AN:-** This chapter and the next one were originally written as one 'The Duelling Club' After it hit 5,000 words I decided to split them

**Chapter Twelve: The Aftermath**

For the next week they only saw each other during the day, in class or the library for study groups. There was a lot of tension in the school though, and the study group was no different. The older years had stopped spending as much time helping them, and Morag no longer came to the study group at all. Lily knew that Daphne was starting to feel isolated, but she couldn't think of a way to make it better. If they stayed in the common room they were bullied by their house mates, if they left they were treated with suspicion by the rest of the school. Only two people in the castle seemed entirely unaffected by the terrible events, and both of them were in the little study group.

At first when Luna Lovegood had sat down next to Sally they hadn't thought anything of it. The girl seemed to go where she wanted and be about as directed as a rain cloud. Then she had started to join in when they started talking about their Potions work, asking whether they had considered adding essence of mint after the horned slugs in the cure for boils. This had spiralled off into a discussion lasting nearly an hour where they tried to find fault with her concoction, until eventually Lily added a little note in her textbook to try it the next time they made it.

Sally had of course accepted Luna without hesitation, and the two of them made quite a pair when they got going on the topic of chizpurfles or bandersnatches. Even Daphne enjoyed the extra member, and Luna didn't seem to either know or care that she was supposed to be suspicious of Daphne. Lily also noticed that she was the only first year who didn't seem to go everywhere with a band of friends, but Lisa confided that it was because the first year didn't have any friends.

Lessons carried on as close to normal as was possible, although most of the teachers did seem to be a little gaunter in the cheeks, and Flitwick didn't smile quite as much as he had the year before. Lily decided that the best way to cheer him up would be to do even better at her charms work, and when she turned in her homework for the week it received the second highest mark in the whole year, an achievement so good she didn't even mind losing to Hermione Granger.

"What I don't understand," Sally said as they trotted along one of the corridors on the way back to their dorms, "is why the teachers can't do anything."

"What do you mean?" Lisa asked.

"Well they know it's real, and they think it's been opened before, so why don't they try and find it?"

"How do you know they're not?"

They rounded a corner and were pounced upon by two hideous creatures covered in boils and red fur. None of the girls reacted, staring at the Weasley twins as they removed the various makeups they had on, "you're no fun," George or Fred said to them.

"I heard you giggling when we were passing the portrait of Stefan the Sniveller," Sally said.

"I heard you whispering to hide when we came through the door," Lily said.

"I know you far too well," Lisa said.

"Fair enough," Fred or George said, "I don't suppose you've seen anyone else following you though? We want to see if these new improved boils get a better scream out of the girls."

"You don't think the boys will scream at them?" Lily asked.

"Boys don't scream," Gred or Forge said, "they shout."

"Or yell."

"Or bellow."

"Ri-ight," Lisa raised one eyebrow, "how very macho of you."

"Exactly," Forge or Gred said, "we're men, we're macho."

"You're in trouble," a harsh voice said from behind them, causing both of the twins to yelp in surprise and jump about a foot in the air.

"How very manly," Lily drawled as Professor McGonagall towered over the Weasleys.

"Girls, you are dismissed."

"Good night Professor McGonagall," Lisa said sweetly as she led her friends around the group and out of sight around a corner, where they immediately stopped and pressed up against the wall so they could eavesdrop.

"So what's this I hear about you dressing up in ridiculous muggle costumes to scare the younger years?" Although she had yet to raise her voice the tone of McGonagall's voice could have melted stone.

"Well we just thought that-" Fred

"With everyone being so scared that-" George

"Maybe we could raise everyones'-" Fred

"Spirits." Both together.

"I see," Sally clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. They all recognised the sounds of McGonagall preparing herself for a truly impressive rant, the kind where her voice went so Scottish you couldn't understand a word and her voice was loud enough to shake cobwebs and very confused spiders loose. "And where in this brilliant plan did terrifying one of the Hufflepuff first years so much she was taken to the Hospital Wing in hysterics fit in?"

"I love it when she gets going," Lisa whispered.

"Especially when it's someone else," Lily returned.

"I thought I said you were dismissed girls."

Lisa stuck her head round the corner to see a very displeased McGonagall glaring at her, the twins giving her a jubilant four thumbs up. "You hear like a bat Professor," Lisa said.

"Thank you Miss Turpin, now to bed with you. Or else"

The three girls scampered away, just slow enough to hear the beginning. "And don't think I didn't see you giving her thumbs up. Trying to corrupt an innocent second year to your mischievous-" the door closed behind them and they were on the Great Staircase.

"You've got to admit," Lisa said as they descended the staircase, "she might be terrifying, but she's very very cool."

* * *

Potions remained one of Lily's most disliked lessons, even after a whole year. In fact she thought that after the defeat of Slytherin last year at the Gryffindors hands Snape had gotten even worse, and definitely the inter-house rivalry was not helped by them spending two hours stuck together in a boiling hot classroom filled with semi-toxic fumes. Today was especially bad because everyone in Gryffindor quite plainly thought that Malfoy was attacking students, and no matter how much Lily might have personally disliked him, she didn't appreciate the blanket of blame being dumped on the whole house just because one of them was a prat.

Snape was on his usual form, praising anything which issued from a Slytherin while the perfect potion Hermione produced met only derision. Goyle's potion was fizzing and issuing bright pink sparks but it still received a nod and a thin smile. Lily had a few minutes while her Swelling Solution simmered and was spending them watching her Head of House stalk along the back row of tables. She had the misfortune of having been paired with Lavender Brown, who was neither a potion-maker or a good friend, and it was clear from the way she kept staring wistfully over to where Parvati and Fay were making their potion Lily was able to guess she didn't want to be stuck with the Slytherin. Unfortunately she didn't want to be stuck with Lavender either, but Pansy Parkinson had managed to manoeuvre the group so Daphne ended up working with Tracey instead. Lily wasn't sure whether she was more sorry for her friend or herself.

Idly watching the Gryffindors she saw Snape heading off to bully Neville, and out of the corner of her eye spotted Harry Potter pulling something out of his pocket and holding it under the desk. Curious, she sat up straighter and watched as he pulled out something that was giving off sparks and lobbed it quickly behind Snape's back to land neatly in Goyle's cauldron. Having had enough experience of what tended to happen in potions classes when things went wrong, and more than enough experience of Hogwarts in general, she dived under the table to the confusion of Lavender and Pansy, who was on her other side.

A second later it turned out she had been very wise, as with a tremendous bang Goyle's cauldron exploded, throwing swelling solution everywhere. It might not have been the most well-made potion ever, but it was more than potent enough, and when a blob caught Lavender on the side of the head the Gryffindor was pulled over as her ear bulged outwards. Everywhere people were grabbing at body parts that had suddenly grown out of their control, and Lily watched in terrified merriment as Draco dropped to his knees with a nose the size of a watermelon.

There was complete chaos, even with Snape shouting in his angriest voice. He managed to restore a semblance of calm after curing the first few people with the antidote, and soon enough the class was gathering around Goyle's cauldron as Snape pulled out the twisted remains of what was unmistakeably a Dr Filibuster firework. Lily's eye widened as she turned to look at Potter, who was trying to look innocent.

Just as she was wondering exactly what sort of horrendous torture Snape would inflict on the Gryffindor to pry the truth out of him the bell went and everyone ran for it, the potion master's anger following them out of the door.

* * *

"No way," Lisa said later as they sat in the library and practiced their wand flicks. It was a task they had to undertake carefully, as Sally's wand had a tendency to shoot sparks or gusts of air if she gestured too violently.

"That's what happened," Lily told her, examining her Defence textbook to make sure the move was correct. She had taken to studying the textbook her mother had worked on in lieu of doing anything Lockhart asked them to. "Harry Potter threw a firework in Goyle's cauldron."

"Why?" Lisa asked, copying Lily's movement, "if Snape had caught him..."

"There must be a reason," Sally said, doing something entirely original with her wand. "I mean, everyone thought they were doing all sorts of weird things last year and they were stopping Voldemort," Lily and Lisa flinched, "so maybe they're doing something about the Chamber."

Lily and Lisa exchanged a look, "I hadn't thought of that actually," Lily said.

"That still doesn't explain blowing up a cauldron," Lisa said, grabbing Sally's wildly flailing hand and showing her the correct sweep.

"Well whatever they're doing I don't want to get caught up in it," Lily replied, moving on to the next exercise, "Slytherin are going to win that cup again this year, and I don't want to lose any points."

"What makes you so confident?" Lisa asked, "you said things have been really bad since the attacks started." She wasn't quite casual enough, and Lily knew what she was really asking.

"I'm fine," she said firmly, "I just keep my head down and no one bothers me. Ever since that Gryffindor got petrified it's gotten quieter, like it's okay when a cat gets attacked but when it's an actual person that takes things too far."

"And everyone has that opinion?"

"Well Malfoy is still being an arrogant toerag about it," Lily admitted, "and his goons all think whatever he tells them to, but the older years are all anxious."

"It's the same in Hufflepuff," Sally said, "all the older years are having really serious conversations all the time but they won't let anyone of us know what's going on."

"Older years are weird," Lisa decided.

"Totally."

**AN:-** I said I was going to get some use out of Luna Lovegood didn't I?

Basically the whole reason for writing this was for two parts, the bit with Fred and George and the bit in the classroom. The original version of this had Lily getting a face full of potion, but I couldn't write it at all, and in the end I decided to go with this version. Trust me, it's the better version.

I love Lisa's response to the Weasleys here. Something I will be working on more is a friendship between the girls and the Weasleys, which will probably begin with the girls getting caught out on one of their sneaking expeditions (or while making the map). Mostly it's to set things up for later, but it's also because I love the Weasley twins and I want to include them a little bit before they leave. Also, I love McGonagall, as you can probably tell.

I think part of the fun for me in writing this is getting to explore all the characters who weren't the main focus. So while the Golden Trio are running around getting in trouble with Malfoy and Snape clearly all these other students, the Weasleys, Pansy, Oliver Wood, Sprout and Flitwick are having their own adventures in Hogwarts. When I was first reading HP and playing HP related playground games I never wanted to be Harry or his friends, I wanted to just be some random Hogwarts student doing whatever it was Hogwarts students did. The place was a goldmine for adventures, you didn't need the main characters for that.

I really really love that bit though. If I may toot my own horn for a bit I think I really nailed McGonagall, and my little bit where I repeat the 'Fred or George' bit makes me chuckle, and of course the girls MST3King again. That's probably my favourite unintended thing, that when conversations from the book happen they overhear and make fun.

Next up: The Duelling Club


	13. Chapter 13

**AN:-** I love writing Lockhart, so here's more for you.

**Chapter Thirteen: The Duelling Club**

It wasn't the end of weird things for the week. On Friday they were walking down through the Entrance Hall when they spotted a group of people gathered around the notice board. They wandered over and saw that a notice had been pinned up. 'Duelling Club' it read, 'Great Hall, 8 o' clock.'

"Interesting," Lisa said as she examined it, "I've always wondered what it would be like to be in a duel."

"Me too," said Lily, "my mother writes about them all the time."

"My mum's _in_ them all the time."

"What is duelling?" Sally asked. "Do they mean fighting with swords? Because I did fencing when I was younger."

"It's the same sort of thing," Lisa explained as more people gathered around them, "only with wands and spells instead of swords."

Behind them someone with a loud Irish accent started speaking, and they moved aside to get out of the way. "So are we interested?" Lily asked as they brushed past Hermione Granger.

"I think we are," Lisa said, leading the way up to the Library, "you never know when duelling might come in handy…"

* * *

That night they gathered with the rest of the interested students in the Great Hall, where a long golden stage was the only decoration, lit by hundreds of floating candles. Seeing that everyone else had their wands out the girls followed suit, looking around at the pitch black ceiling and listening to the excited chatter.

"Flitwick used to be a duelling champion," Lisa told them, trying to peer past a fifth year, "he sometimes tells us about it, and there's medals all over his office. Maybe he wants to teach the students?"

"Knowing our luck it'll probably be Snape," Lily muttered darkly.

"Yeah," Lisa joined in with a laugh, "or-"

"Gather round, gather round!" Suddenly wondering whether they were asking for fate to kick them in the teeth, the girls looked to the stage, where Lockhart and Professor Snape were swooping onto the stage, one looking much more intimidating than the other. "Can everyone see me?" Lockhart went on, "can you all hear me? Excellent!"

He set himself centre stage and put his hands on his hips as he surveyed his audience, most of whom seemed to be drinking it in. He had thrust his chest out slightly, which served mainly to emphasise how little there was to thrust out, and was beaming his _Lumos_ smile at them.

"Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little duelling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions — for full details, see my published works."

"Very nice," Lisa mumbled.

"I thought so," Lily drawled back, "both subtle _and_ understated."

Several people shushed them as they giggled.

"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," said Lockhart, flashing a wide smile. "He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about duelling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin." From the look Snape now gave Lockhart Lily thought it was more than a little.

Lockhart still wasn't done, "now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry — you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him, never fear!" The look had changed again, and could only be described as murderous. Lily certainly hoped Snape would never look at her like that, nothing good could ever follow.

The two teachers marched a few paces apart and bowed to each other, and it looked to Lily like Snape was wishing his head bob was smashing against Lockhart's nose, before directing their wands at each other. Lockhart was ever the showman, his hand held high above his head, all his weight on his back leg while his front leg barely brushed the ground. Snape's stance looked far more practical, side on to his target with his wand arm pointed straight in front of him, the other arm hidden behind him.

As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," Lockhart told the silent crowd. "On the count of three, we will cast our first spells." He flashed a smile that made Lily wish she was the one about to fire curses at him. "Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course."

Even the girls were silent as Lockhart counted down, and on 'one' the two slashed their wands through the air. Lockhart's was a full body circle, the wand coming high above his head in an arc so slow Lily thought she probably could have caught him if they had been duelling. Snape's move was much tighter to his body, with a snap of the wrist to get his wand in place before Lockhart's had even rounded his ear.

"Expelliarmus!"

With a blast of red light Lockhart was thrown a good twenty feet backwards through the air, slamming into the wall and crumping at the bottom, his blond hair askew and his hat lost somewhere in the crowd. Several Slytherins cheered and Lily considered joining them as the Defence teacher got to his feet, looking distinctly ruffled.

"Woah," Lisa whispered.

"I know," Lily whispered back, "I want to try."

"Me too," said Sally, sticking her head in between them.

Lockhart was back on stage, still a little unsteady, "well, there you have it!" he said. "That was a Disarming Charm — as you see, I've lost my wand — ah, thank you, Miss Brown — yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been only too easy — however, I felt it would be instructive to let them see…"

Lily saw Snape's wand twitch slightly. Possibly Lockhart had noticed, because he said, "enough demonstrating! I'm going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me —"

The three girls looked at each other, suddenly realising they couldn't all be together, "I'll go with you," Sally said, "then Lisa you can find someone…" before she got any further someone grabbed Lily's arm and took advantage of the movement to get her away from her friends.

When she had stopped being dragged Lily looked back to see Pansy Parkinson sneering at her, "that's better," the girl said, "get you away from those people."

"Those people are my friends," Lily hissed, "and this is pretty brave isn't it? No Millicent to back you up?"

"I don't need her," Pansy said, "I've been studying."

"You? I didn't know you knew what books were."

"Shut up."

"Are you sure you've studied enough?" Lily made a big show of flexing her wrist out, still holding her wand. It seemed to warm slightly in her hands, though maybe she was imagining it.

"Face your partners!" Lockhart called from the stage, "and bow!"

Lily and Pansy didn't bother, staring at each other intently. "Wands at the ready!" Lily tried to emulate Snape's position, turning so her right side was facing Pansy and holding her wand straight out in front of her, she repeated the name of the spell again and again in her head as Lockhart counted down, "three, two, one…"

She swung her arm as quickly as she could and shouted, "expelliarmus!"

Nothing happened. She thought she saw Pansy's hand twitch slightly, but nothing else. Before she could try again Pansy had swung her wand and shouted, "locomotor wibbly!"

Lily collapsed to the floor as her knees gave out underneath her. It was terrifying, as she tried to drag her legs out from underneath herself, to realise that she had no control over them. She started to hyperventilate as she tried uselessly to feel anything below the waist, and from a short way away heard Pansy laughing.

Gritting her teeth she forced herself to sit, balancing with one hand as she pointed her wand at Pansy and her mind flew through the older year books she had read. Eventually she cried, "posuit nasusedo!" And watched in delighted horror as Pansy keeled over backwards, pus spouting from her nose and onto her robes. The Slytherin screamed in outrage, trying to stem the flow of the sticky yellow goop, but it was no good.

While Lily was still struggling to stand Pansy pointed her wand again and shouted, "loquitor!"

Lily stated to speak, words falling out of her mouth like the pus out of Pansy's nose, she clamped her hands over her mouth but continued to mumble. She wasn't even thinking about words, just blurting out complete nonsense while she tried desperately to stop herself. She couldn't even direct what might come out. Furious she pointed her wand at pansy, hearing Lockhart shouting something above the crowd. She tried to force a spell out but nothing was working, and as she saw Snape stepping forwards and raising his wand she resorted to swiping her wand in frustration, concentrating on nothing but Pansy's smug face.

There was a final bang and Pansy dropped backwards, the pus finally stopping as Snape's spell took effect but a nasty red welt appearing on her cheek.

"Dear, dear," Lockhart was scurrying through the crowd looking decidedly skittish. There was a haze of green smoke over the Hall and many people nursing injuries "Careful there, Miss Fawcett… Pinch it hard, it'll stop bleeding in a second." Standing in the middle of the chaos, Lockhart looked around at the students and stammered, "I think I'd better teach you how to block unfriendly spells."

Pansy and Lily had both pulled themselves up, Sally and Lisa coming over to Lily's side and staring at the mark on Pansy's cheek. The girl was rubbing it and glaring at Lily with a look of absolute hatred.

"Let's have a volunteer pair" Lockhart said, "Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you?"

"A bad idea, Professor Lockhart," said Snape, gliding over like a large and malevolent bat. "Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox." Lily looked over at Neville, who blushed and buried his head inside his robes. "How about Malfoy and Potter?" said Snape with a twisted smile.

"Excellent idea!" said Lockhart, gesturing Harry and Malfoy into the middle of the hall as the crowd backed away to give them room.

"Now, Harry," said Lockhart, regaining some of his former pomp. "When Draco points his wand at you, you do this." He raised his own wand, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action, and dropped it. Snape smirked as Lockhart quickly picked it up, saying, "Whoops— my wand is a little overexcited."

Lily watched as Snape moved closer to Malfoy and whispered something in his ear. Malfoy was smirking as well now, and Lily didn't like to think about why that might be. Harry looked up nervously at Lockhart and said, "Professor, could you show me that blocking thing again?"

Lockhart cuffed Harry merrily on the shoulder. "Just do what I did, Harry!"

"What, drop my wand?" Lily couldn't help but smile at that, even though she was worried for what might come next.

Lockhart swept out of the way and raised his arms, "three — two — one — go!" he shouted.

Malfoy raised his wand quickly and bellowed, "_Serpensortia_!"

There was a tremendous bang, and out of the end of his wand a long black snake erupted. The crowd backed away, several people screamed, including Sally, and Harry Potter froze.

"Don't move, Potter," said Snape lazily, clearly enjoying the sight of Harry standing motionless, eye to eye with the angry snake. "I'll get rid of it…"

Lily was pushed aside as Lockhart swept out, "allow me!" He shouted, brandishing his wand at the snake. There was a loud bang and instead of disappearing the snake shot ten feet into the air and fell back to the floor with a loud smack. Enraged, hissing furiously, it slithered straight toward a Huffelpuff boy and raised itself again, fangs exposed, poised to strike. Sally gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth as the snake came closer.

Lily watched in stunned silence as Harry Potter walked forwards and opened his mouth to speak. She had no idea what he was hoping achieve, but then what emerged from his mouth wasn't English, but some sort of strangled hissing. She already knew what she was going to see, but when she looked to the snake it was turning to look at Potter, calm and docile. It was her turn to gasp as the snake slithered low to the ground, staring at the Gryffindor while its head swayed slightly from side to side.

Potter didn't seem scared at all, grinning goofily at the Hufflepuff, who shouted, "what do you think you're playing at?" Before he ran from the hall.

Snape stepped forward, waved his wand, and the snake vanished in a small puff of black smoke. The muttering started, all around the walls, and people began to close in on Harry. Before anyone else got to him Hermione and the red head had grabbed him and pulled him out of the hall. The three girls looked at each other in disbelief, none of them quite sure what to say.

"Well then," Lockhart still sound inexplicably cheerful, as if he had absolutely no idea what had just happened, "I think that was an excellent evening don't you? Now everyone back to your dorms, I think we'll have another meeting in a week."

Most of the crowd had already chased Harry out, clearly hoping to find out what had just happened, and the rest were more than eager to get away from Snape, whose expression was almost hungry as he stared at the door. The girls waited until everyone else had filed away to their dorms before sliding open their secret door and stepping into the tunnel behind it.

"What just happened?" Sally asked as she leaned against the wall.

"I have absolutely no idea," Lily said.

Lisa was looking contemplative, "I think I do." She leaned back against the wall and rubbed her chin, "I was reading about Salazar Slytherin, and it says that he had the ability to speak to snakes."

"Why were you reading about Slytherin?"

"Because the monster, the Chamber of Secrets? It's all connected to Slytherin, and he had the ability to speak to snakes, that's why the emblem of Slytherin is a snake."

"You don't think…?" Lily trailed off and shook her head, "it's ridiculous."

Sally clearly hadn't reached the same place as her friends, "what?"

"Salazar Slytherin had the ability to speak to snakes, the Chamber of Secrets has something to do with the 'Heir of Slytherin,' Potter just spoke to a snake," Lisa shrugged, "it's not impossible."

Lily was still disbelieving, "but Slytherin's been dead for a thousand years, he couldn't even have any heirs left could he? And even if he did they wouldn't end up in Gryffindor."

"Would they? The house doesn't just put everyone in the same family in the same house, look at Padma and Parvati."

Sally also didn't look convinced, "but Harry stopped Voldemort last year, he couldn't be evil, and the only attacks have been a cat and a Gryffindor. Why wouldn't he start with a Slytherin, no offence."

"None taken," Lily frowned, "Harry does hate Filch, everyone knows that, and that first year who got attacked, I heard the Slytherin team talking about how he had been following Potter everywhere," actually Terence, who had been spying on the Slytherin team, had told her, but they didn't need to know that.

"I just don't think that someone as good as Harry would attack someone because they were annoying him."

"Well I can tell you one thing," Lisa said, looking back to the entrance to the tunnel, "this is going to be all over the school by tomorrow. Most of them were right there when it happened, and anyone who wasn't will hear about it."

"Speaking of," Lily said, checking her watch, "I need to go, I don't want to be out after dark."

"Good point." Lisa stood up properly and smiled to her friends, "see you tomorrow?"

"Quidditch Practice?" Lily asked. The Ravenclaw team practiced on Saturday afternoons, and Sally and Lily had made a habit of watching them, after Lisa had assured her teammates that they weren't there to spy.

"I don't know why you insist on watching them," Lisa said, hugging Sally and nodding to Lily, "but thank you." She went over to the ladder which led to the third floor and was gone.

Sally and Lily snuck back out into the Entrance Hall, which was now lit only by the moonlight. Clearly Lockhart and Snape had left the Great Hall. The two girls stood in the hall, looking at the great doors. "You don't really think Harry Potter could be the Heir of Slytherin?" Sally asked.

Lily shrugged, "I don't know. All I know is that it's not Malfoy, and speaking to snakes is definitely not common."

"You shouldn't be so suspicious," Sally hauled her away to the staircase, "I still think this is just a mean prank someone's playing on the school."

Lily managed a faint smile as they went down to the dungeons, "I wish I could," she said softly, wondering whether she wanted Sally to hear or not. "I just don't work that way."

The Hufflepuff grabbed her and hugged her when they reached the two corridors they would split up at. "Don't be paranoid," Sally said firmly, and hurried off to her dorm. Lily watched her friend go; wishing not for the first time that she didn't have to return to the Slytherin Common Room, then sighed deeply and trudged back to her own house.

**AN:-** When I first sat down to do a little plotting, the bit between Lily and Pansy was something I wrote down as a definite for this year. Each year has moments like this, things which I have written down in advance and planned to involve. In the first book it was the portrait-slide, the nighttime broomstick rides and the Great Hall food fight. There are some more for this book still to come, but I won't spoil them.

Most of this chapter is copied almost verbatim from the respective chapter in Harry Potter 2, but adjusted for Lily's viewpoint. It's such a big important moment that I couldn't change it too much, and I think Rowling did a very good job of writing it, so trying to rewrite it just felt so pointless.

Then again, my favourite additions... More MST3king (I told you I liked it, and Lockhart is so perfect for it) Lily actually being threatening to Pansy. I feel like this is an actual character development. Last year she wouldn't have been , but her friendships with Lisa, Sally and Terence have made her a lot braver. The spells are Disarming, the jelly legs jinx, the unidentified pus from the nose spell Morfin Gaunt use in Book 6, the Babbling Jinx, and relashio.

Why these spells, and what's up with Lily's wand?

The first spell doesn't work very well because actually what did Lockhart teach them? They know the incantation and roughly the arm movement, but nothing else. Also, Lily doesn't really want to hurt Pansy when she starts, so she doesn't put much intention into the spell, and as we know that translates to weaker spells. As with their fight last year, Pansy is trying to make Lily look stupid, so the jelly legs jinx is her first choice, and the babbling charm is her second. Lily's spells are older year and definitely meaner. I was trying to represent what happens when you push someone just a little too far through bullying, especially when they are stronger than you. The video of Casey Heynes made it very clear why bullying someone bigger and stronger than you is a bad idea, and magically Lily is just much more powerful than Pansy. Two years of bullying and tension just exploded in the most painful curse Lily could think of. And of course relashio is outright physical pain.

Why can Lily do non-verbal magic? Three reasons: 1. She's read about it and understands that it can work, even if she doesn't understand how. She's also pissed enough that her intention communicates itself without the need for words. 2. It's often shown that young wizards can let spells slip out without words, like when Harry inflates his aunt in book 3. This is similar. 3. Wands made of pine are great for non-verbal magic and 'will adapt unprotestingly to new methods and spells.'

See, remember back in book 1 when I said that I had researched wand wood and cores? This is genuinely what I was heading towards.

Finally, I imagine that Lockhart is standing much like an old fashioned Elizabethan fencer, but a wand is a ranged weapon, and Snape is a better duellist, so he stands like an Old-West gunfighter. Profile to the target to minimise target and the minimu of movement for the maximum effect.


	14. Chapter 14

**AN:-** Finally, some Sally POV

**Chapter Fourteen: The Third Attack**

Herbology had been cancelled, but Transfiguration hadn't, which made Sally annoyed and bored. She had hoped that she might be able to spend her free period with Lisa and Lily, but they were actually learning things while she was stuck in the library with Ernie MacMillan, the most boring Hufflepuff in the castle.

She would have quite enjoyed it otherwise, because she got to sit and talk to Hannah Abbot, who was really shy but really nice when she wasn't surrounded by rowdy Gryffindors or Slytherins, and Wayne was there as well, which meant things weren't totally boring. Wayne liked to sit behind Ernie whenever he was making a big speech, something Ernie did a lot, and mime what Ernie was doing, which always made Sally giggle.

Today however, even Wayne didn't seem to be a joking mood, and when they finally gave up on pretending to study and leaned in to talk he was right there with the rest.

"I should have suspected Potter right from the beginning," Ernie began importantly, "I mean, everyone knows what happened last year with You-Know-Who, and there's always been things about him that didn't make sense."

"What do you mean?" Sally asked curiously. She didn't even think Ernie and Harry had met the year before, yet alone spoken.

"Well like how he managed to survive when he was a baby. Nobody else ever did, and You-Know-Who was the most powerful dark sorcerer ever. Now we know that Potter can talk to snakes as well…" Ernie sat back as though this proved his argument undeniably.

Megan seemed to think otherwise, frowning at him, "but he stopped You-Know-Who last year," she said, "why would he do that if he was so bad?"

"Who knows?" Ernie said, which Sally suspected was code for 'I hadn't thought about that.' "But it can't be good can it? And now it looks like Justin's managed to get himself targeted."

Sally couldn't stay quiet any longer, "don't you think if he was targeting people he'd have gone after someone like Malfoy?"

"Maybe he doesn't hate the Slytherins as much as he wants us all to think," Ernie said in what he obviously thought was an ominous whisper, "or he could be trying to make it look like it couldn't be him. Malfoy is too obvious a target." Ernie looked quite pleased that he had managed to explain her logic away.

"So anyway I told Justin to hide up in our dormitory. I mean to say, if Potter's marked him down as his next victim, it's best if he keeps a low profile for a while. Of course, Justin's been waiting for something like this to happen ever since he let slip to Potter he was Muggle-born. Justin actually told him he'd been down for Eton. That's not the kind of thing you bandy about with Slytherin's heir on the loose, is it?"

Hannah seemed to have changed her mind, "you definitely think it is Potter, then, Ernie?"

"Hannah," Sally recognised Ernie's best pontificating tone; "he's a Parselmouth. Everyone knows that's the mark of a Dark wizard. Have you ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes? They called Slytherin himself Serpent-tongue." That caused muttering from the others, which Sally didn't take part in. She might not know for sure whether it was Harry or not, but everyone talking about him behind his back seemed a lot like what people had done to Lily the year before, and back then she and Lisa had called it bullying.

Clearly pleased at the reaction the others had to his news, Ernie continued in even more hushed tones, "remember what was written on the wall? Enemies of the Heir, Beware. Potter had some sort of run-in with Filch. Next thing we know, Filch's cat's attacked. That first year, Creevey, was annoying Potter at the Quidditch match, taking pictures of him while he was lying in the mud. Next thing we know — Creevey's been attacked."

"He always seems so nice, though," said Hannah uncertainly, "and, well, he's the one who made You-Know-Who disappear. He can't be all bad, can he?"

Ernie lowered his voice mysteriously and the Hufflepuffs bent closer, "No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful Dark wizard could have survived a curse like that." He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, "That's probably why You- Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn't want another Dark Lord competing with him. I wonder what other powers Potter's been hiding?"

Someone behind a bookshelf cleared their throat and stepped into view. After a second's pause they realised it was Harry and everyone froze, staring at him in barely disguised fear. Ernie quickly lost his bluster as all the colour drained from his cheeks.

"Hello," said Harry. "I'm looking for Justin Finch-Fletchley."

Everyone looked to Ernie, who tried to draw himself up and look unafraid. It didn't work, making him look more like he was sitting on something uncomfortable. "What do you want with him?" He asked in a quavering voice.

"I wanted to tell him what really happened with that snake at the Dueling Club," said Harry.

Ernie bit his white lips and then, taking a deep breath, said, "we were all there. We saw what happened."

"Then you noticed that after I spoke to it, the snake backed off?" said Harry.

"All I saw," said Ernie stubbornly, though he was trembling as he spoke, "was you speaking Parseltongue and chasing the snake toward Justin."

Harry was clearly getting angry now, and Sally could see that his fists were clenched, "I didn't chase it at him!" Harry's voice was shaking he was so angry, "it didn't even touch him!"

"It was a very near miss," said Ernie. "And in case you're getting ideas," he added hastily, "I might tell you that you can trace my family back through nine generations of witches and warlocks and my blood's as pure as anyone's, so —"

"I don't care what sort of blood you've got!" Said Harry fiercely. "Why would I want to attack Muggle-borns?"

"I've heard you hate those Muggles you live with," said Ernie swiftly.

"It's not possible to live with the Dursleys and not hate them," said Harry. "I'd like to see you try it."

He turned on his heel and stormed out of the library, earning himself a reproving glare from Madam Pince, who was polishing the gilded cover of a large spellbook. After he was very sure Potter was gone Ernie turned back to the table of Hufflepuffs, "well," he said, "I think that just proves it."

"How does that prove it?" Sally asked, "I thought he was just defending himself."

"Well he was clearly protesting too much. If he was really so innocent would he feel a need to explain himself?"

"And if he hadn't defended himself would you have said he obviously didn't do it?"

Sally had never won very many arguments in her life. She wasn't the cleverest person and she could never seem to bring all her thoughts together so they made arguments. She sometimes admired how well Lisa and Lily were able to do it, but whenever she tried she lost the point of her own point and ended up flailing helplessly in circles. But this time she knew she had said exactly the right thing, as Ernie spluttered at her and the other Hufflepuffs stared in amazement.

Sally collected her books together and smiled at her friends, "I'm going to go back to the common room," she said, "see you there."

She was walking back down the staircase to the dorm when she heard shouting from above and the noises of stampeding students. She hurried up to the corridor the noise was coming from and found a mass of students shoving to get in and see what was going on. She eventually managed to get close enough to the front to see something black and cloudy floating a few feet off the ground. With a jolt she realised it was Nearly Headless Nick, and he wasn't moving.

Students were rushing everywhere, several of them stepping right through the ghost, and she found herself being pushed back against the walls when McGonagall let off a loud explosion from the end of her wand. In the restored calm she heard Ernie MacMillan shout, "caught in the act!"

"That will do MacMillan," McGonagall said while Peves swooped in and about the students' heads, singing something about Potter killing off students. Sally struggled for a better look and caught a glimpse of Justin Finch-Fletchley on the floor, petrified.

Her breath caught in her chest and she sagged, nearly hitting the floor before she felt hands around her shoulders and someone held her up, "it's okay," she recognised Lily's voice, strained and tense, but comforting in the middle of the madness.

The crowd began to thin as they saw Flitwick and Professor Sinistra carrying Justin away. Meanwhile McGonagall was trying to find ways to move Nearly Headless Nick. Eventually she settled on conjuring a large fan and having Ernie waft him away. Sally was feeling increasingly sick, and as Lisa made her way over she felt Lily guiding her to the stairs as well. Her friends were on both sides, holding her close as they followed Ernie down to the hospital wing.

"Not another one," said Madame Pomfrey as they walked through the door.

"No," Lily said, "she's not feeling very well, she just saw what happened and…"

Madame Pomfrey nodded, "of course, this can be a very trying time for everyone, let's get you over here," she said softly to Sally, guiding her to a bed and helping her to climb in. There were curtains drawn at the end of the hospital wing and they all knew what was behind them, but none of them were interested as Lisa and Lily dragged chairs over and watched their friend anxiously.

Madame Pomfey came bustling back with a goblet of something that she handed to Sally with a smile, "make sure she drinks all of it," the matron told Lisa before slipping back behind the curtain.

"I'm so silly," Sally said quietly as she sipped the potion.

"No you're not," Lisa was looking very pale as well, and maybe Lily was, but it was hard to tell with her usual skin tone being so white. "it's horrible."

Lily nodded in agreement, "I can't wait to get out of here for Christmas."

"Oh," Lisa smiled and pulled out a letter from an inside pocket of her robes, "I wrote to my parents before, they said they'd love to have you both back again."

Sally nodded, "my mum told me over summer that if you wanted to come and spend Christmas with us you both could feel welcome."

Lily shuffled uncomfortably, "I haven't actually asked my parents," she confessed.

"Well we can do what we did last year," Lisa said with little too much forced cheer, "everyone round to my house before Christmas, then we all spend some time with just families, then we all go to Sally's?"

The others nodded at this, thinking it sounded like a good plan. "Is there anything else that we could see at the cinema?" Lily asked curiously. She had loved seeing _Beauty and the Beast_ the year before and had been waiting eagerly for her chance to see another one. She had hoped to go to the cinema with her parents over summer, but they had been too busy.

"I don't know actually," Lisa said, "but I'm sure there's something."

Sally had been finishing her potion, and was starting to feel better. She sat up and put the goblet on her bedside table, smiling, "okay," she said, "I'm feeling better now."

Lily wasn't convinced, "are you sure?"

"I'm sure, it was just a shock, seeing Justin like that," she sat on the edge of the bed, "I was only having breakfast with him this morning…" Her voice caught a little, but Lisa and Lily were good enough to pretend they hadn't heard, helping her to stand and filing out back into the school.

When they reached the staircase they had to split up again for their different classes, and Sally took the opportunity to hug her friends again, "I hope they catch whoever's doing this," she said quietly.

Lisa hugged her back, "so do I."

* * *

Predictably, there was a virtual stampede when the lists went around of which students wanted to go home for the holidays. The invitation had been formally extended from Sally and Lisa's parents to have the girls around for the week at the beginning and end of the holiday. As they had the year before Lily's family had asked for her to stay with them from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, but Lily didn't mind. Now that she was in a castle with hundreds of students every day she found she appreciated the quiet moments she had with her family.

The study groups had fallen completely apart after Justin's attack. Even though half the school now suspected Harry, they held Slytherins with exactly the same contempt. Daphne had retreated almost entirely, and even Lily couldn't talk to her anymore. The Slytherin Common Room was silent as a grave most nights while the older years gave each other dark looks and the younger years sat around worried.

Lily was spending most of her time out and about the castle with Lisa and Sally, and although they were all more than aware of what could happen to them they frequently found themselves pushing the limits of the curfew before they finally bid each other goodnight and returned to their dorms.

During these walks Lisa finally insisted that they start their mapping project, since it would take them such a long time. They decided to start by doing the first three floors, from the Entrance Hall to the Defence Classroom. So one blustery November night they set out with a parchment and inks and sat on the steps outside the Great Hall sketching the rough dimensions of the Hall.

"Should we include statues and things as well?" Sally asked as she scrawled their copy. She was the best artist out of the three of them, so while Lisa and Lily took measurements she was drawing them.

"I think so," Lisa said, "just as landmarks. And of course we have to put all the secret passageways in, so the portraits that cover them as well."

"Even our secret door here?" Lily asked, slightly distressed. She had always liked the idea that only they knew about that passage.

Lisa noticed her concern. "Only we can use the map while we're here, and after we leave it won't matter who else knows about it."

"I bet Fred and George know anyway," Sally said, "they seem to know everything, and Filch."

"I suppose…" but she was still more than a little sad when Sally drew the outline of the door on the parchment.

In the end they spent nearly two hours just getting from the doors of the Great Hall to the bottom of the staircase, but the result was encouraging, and when Sally rolled up the parchment they all felt like they had accomplished something.

* * *

Things were bleak as they got closer to the holidays. Most of the school seemed to have turned against Harry Potter, and Slytherin was catching some of it as well. Lily's classes could have been split down the middle according to which house sat on which side, and the teachers barely even seemed to notice, rushing about having muttered conversations between classes. Only Gilderoy Lockhart seemed unaffected, sweeping about with his beaming smile asking people why they were so glum.

"It's nearly Christmas after all," he explained loudly to a group of first year Gryffindors who were clearly missing the petrified boy, "you should be cheerful and happy!"

"Can he really be that delusional?" Lisa muttered as they watched from the sidelines.

"Yes," Lily said with no small amount of venom. Their classes with Lockhart had gotten almost unbearable, and it was clear that he thought Slytherin were to blame. He had devoted nearly an hour of their last class to talking about how he had bested several dark sorcerers from 'the house of the snake' during his travels.

"Make way!" A loud voice announced from further down the corridor, and strangely enough the crowd actually moved.

"Oh you can't be serious," Lisa said in a voice that was half-admiring and half-exasperated.

"Make way for the Heir!"

"That's the Weasleys isn't it?"

"Yep, and the Heir himself."

Lily craned her neck to look and saw a very embarrassed Harry Potter standing slightly behind the Weasley twins, who were swaggering with all the pomp they could manage, their arms outstretched to keep the students at bay.

"Seriously evil wizard here folks," one of them said, "you do not want to get in his way he might just petrify you."

"Is Harry okay with this?" Lily asked as the strange procession passed them.

Lisa shrugged, "looks like he's smiling to me."

Fred and or George nodded to the girls as they went by, and Lisa nodded back. The girls watched Harry Potter go by, Lily wondering what he was thinking. It seemed to her as though even Gryffindor had turned against him, and she knew from experience how that felt. She couldn't imagine how much worse it would be when nearly the whole school was isolating you.

"Come on," Lily said, tugging her sleeve, "we don't want to be late for McGonagall."

She was right of course, Lily seemed to have hit some sort of wall with her Transfiguration work, and while she was finding the theory easier, trying to apply it to the teacup she was supposed to be giving legs was another thing. If she didn't improve soon she would start getting extra work.

When they arrived McGonagall was already there, adding complex formulae to the board in her elegant handwriting. It reminded Lily of her dad's Arithmancy work, and was just as impenetrable.

"This is going to be fun," she muttered to her friend as they sat down and got their books out.

**AN:-** I knew one of the girls was going to get a bit sick about the second attack. Having it be Sally just kind of made sense. She is the more sensitive and she is in Justin's house after all. I quite like that whole scene actually. I always think the best part of any story is when the characters start to write themselves, and they really are in this story. This whole trio has finally come together in a way I like, and I know how to write Sally as well, which I didn't when I started.

I don't think the Slytherins would be happy with what's going on. I know we see Malfoy being horrible about it and wishing he could congratulate the perpetrator but come on, not every single Slytherin can think that. Most of them are just kids as well, scared and frightened and naturally quite a suspicious and paranoid bunch. It would I think be deeply uncomfortable to be in Slytherin during this year, because while the other houses would pull together out of a sense of solidarity, Slytherin would be left out in the cold both by other houses and their own house-mates.

The beginning of the Great Mapping Project. I've been looking forward to this. It's not going to be the same as the Marauders Map, but it will of course have some similarities, and will also have plot relevance to the girls.

Re-reading CoS, it really does seem like Lockhart doesn't have the faintest clue what's going on, or seem to care that there are students being knocked off left and right. Overall he came off to me as being quite callous during the attacks. Or clueless, whichever you prefer. The bit about him blaming Slytherins for things is not my favourite idea ever. I may get rid of it, but time will tell.

I loved the idea of the Weasleys going around like announcers for Harry, so I thought I'd throw in a little reference to it.


	15. Chapter 15

**AN:-** Uh, this one kind of got away from me folks. So enjoy the extra long chapter!

**Chapter Fifteen: December**

Lily sat in the Slytherin Common Room late into the night, trying to practice her Transfiguration work. She had been given extra after her _Evanesco_ failed to make even the slightest change to the book she was supposed to be disappearing.

"Evanesco," she growled, jabbing her wand at her potions book for what felt like the thousandth time.

Nothing happened. The book sat there on the table, as solid and visible as it had been the last thousand times.

"Evanesco."

Still nothing.

"You need to relax your wrist," someone said from the entrance to the dorms. She looked up to see Terence watching her and blushed.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Just the last two dozen attempts," he said with a grin, coming over to sit next to her and drawing his own wand, "watch closely." He jabbed at the book as well, but she could see there was a flex to his wrist that she had been lacking, and the tip of his wand flicked ever so slightly upwards as he did so, "evanesco."

The book promptly vanished. Lily glared at him, "you have no idea how much I hate you right now," she said.

He grinned wider and tapped the space where the book had been, "aparecium!" The book promptly reappeared. "Now you try."

She jabbed her wand a few times trying to mimic the movement he had done. He gently took her hand and rearranged her fingers on the wand. "Try it like this," he said, "at the very least it'll keep your hand from cramping."

Her hand still felt very warm after he had let it go, but she jabbed a few more times, noticing the flick of her own wand as well now, "alright," she said, aiming for the book, "evanesco!"

The book vanished.

Well, mostly. There was still the faintest distortion in the air, like heat waves over a fire, but the book was definitely in the 'not visible' camp. As Terry applauded she dropped back in her seat and breathed out deeply. "Well," she said, "that took long enough."

"Sometimes it helps to have a little nudge," he said, bumping her with his shoulder. Now that the spell was distracting her she became suddenly very aware of how close they were sitting, close enough that his leg was touching hers. She bit her lip and sat up again, shifting ever so slightly so they were further apart.

"Thank you," she said, "but I don't suppose you feel like doing some potions homework as well?"

He shook his head and stood, laughing, "oh no, I did my time in second year, I'm not repeating it."

She laughed as well, "it was worth a try. Good night."

"Don't stay up too late," he told her, heading back to the dorm.

When she was sure he was gone she put down her wand and stared at her hand, wondering how it could still feel warm. _Stop being silly,_ she thought to herself, picking up the wand again and frowning as the book started to reappear of its own accord.

But as she collected her things she couldn't help thinking about how she might convince him to show her some other spells as well. Purely for academic purposes of course.

* * *

"So who is he?" Sally asked the next day as they climbed to the Astronomy Tower.

"What?" Said Lisa and Lily together.

Sally grinned, "I knew there was something different about you two."

"Don't be silly," Lisa said, blushing furiously.

"So who's the boy?"

"I bet it's Michael," Lily said.

"Michael?"

"Tall dark and silent? He was talking to Lisa at the Quidditch match."

"Ooh," Sally's smile widened, "Lisa's got a cru-ush," she sang.

"Shut up, I do not," Lisa had sped up so they couldn't see her face properly, but the back of her neck was so red it almost glowed.

They passed a portrait of a knight in armour trying to wield a sword that was far too heavy for him. As he clattered backwards Sally tittered and he sprang to his feet immediately with a cry of 'Bounders!' but they were already past and heading up some stairs.

"So what's Michael like?" Sally pressed.

"I do not have a crush on him."

"You don't have a crush on him, so you can't tell us what he's like?" Lily asked slyly.

Lisa glared at her, "you know what I meant."

"I bet he reads," Sally said, "that's why Lisa likes him."

"And he's tall," said Lily, "he's almost as tall as Harry Potter's friend."

"I bet when he speaks it's all poetry and philosophying.

"Shut u-up," Lisa said from far ahead. "And anyway, what about Lily?"

"What about Lily?" Lily said.

"You were just as shocked, you've got a crush as well."

"No I don't."

"Ooh ooh ooh," Sally bounced a little on her toes, "who is he? What's he like?"

"He's no one."

"Then why is your face all red?"

Lily buried her head into her robes, "my face is not red."

"Is it someone in Slytherin?"

Lily hunched deeper and the three of them stopped.

"More than one boy?" Sally gasped, "oh I have to know now!"

"How do you do that?" Lily asked exasperatedly.

Sally grinned, "Hufflepuff remember? I know people." She bounced right up next to Lily and stared at her from less than an inch away.

"Alright," Lily said, trying to escape but backing into a wall, "alright." They carried on walking, "_maybe_ I've been spending some time with Terry and _maybe_ he's really sweet and nice and kind and helps me with spells and _maybe_ I kind of _maybe _like him a little bit."

"Maybe?" Lisa smiled wryly.

"Maybe," Lily confirmed.

"Who's the other boy?" Sally asked.

"He's no one as well."

"And he's not in Slytherin is he?" Lisa was, in Lily's opinion, enjoying this entirely too much.

Thankfully, they had finally reached the astronomy tower, and they stepped out to see the globes bathed in soft moonlight, and the magical instruments gleaming faintly, whether from their own power or not it was impossible to tell. The girls walked over to the balcony, drawing their cloaks tighter to keep out the autumn chill, and sat with their feet dangling over the edge, leaning against the railing. Sally swung her legs happily while Lisa and Lily simply leaned against the bars and looked up at the night sky.

"That's beautiful," Lisa said.

"Ready for another Astronomy lesson?" Lily asked, reaching over to grab her bag.

Lisa sighed and got her work out as well, "I suppose we should…"

Sally watched the two of them, "can't we just enjoy the stars for a bit?"

Lisa unfurled her star map, "we really shouldn't, it's probably not safe to be up here for too long."

"It's only eight o' clock," Lily said, "we're before curfew."

"I wasn't talking about curfew," Lisa muttered.

Lily didn't answer, choosing instead to unfold her telescope and check that she had taken down the position of Sagittarius properly. Lisa opened her own map, which was much messier and covered in crossings out and scribbling, and checked it against Lily's. Sally was back to making hand shapes across the sky, charting the constellations in her own special way.

"What are we going to do at Christmas?" She asked as Lily refilled in some of Lisa's star map.

"Cinema?" Lily asked.

"My dad said he wanted to go to the Panto," Lisa said, "I think they're managed to get Christopher Biggins to come and do it."

Lily stared at her friend, "I don't think I understood even half of that."

"Okay," said Lisa, getting comfortable, "where should I start?"

"Panto."

"Well it's really Pantomime, but you call it Panto. It's like theatre, but they're all about jokes and slapstick and audience participation. And you sometimes get really well known actors coming to do the local Panto, and our one this year has Christopher Biggins."

"And he is..."

"A very well known actor on television."

"Right," said Lily, resisting the urge to raise an eyebrow. "Television, this thing that is supposed to be really great." She had seen the televisions at Sally and Lisa's houses over Christmas, but they hadn't ever gotten round to watching them. Sally's brother was far too hyper to ever sit still and watch something, and at Lisa's the primary form of entertainment was books.

"Television _is_ great," said Sally, "you just have to find a really good program and watch it. Like Eastenders or Casualty."

"Your parents let you watch Casualty?" Lisa said with a gasp.

"They don't _let_ me so much as not stop me," Sally said coyly.

"You can be very sneaky when you want to," Lisa said admiringly.

Sally shrugged, returning to the stars. Lily was still struggling to decipher the scrawl of Lisa's homework. "How can it be," she grumbled, "that someone who can understand Snape's handwriting, and can take the most beautiful notes for Transfiguration," she turned the parchment upside down to see if it helped, "still can't manage to write that the three fire signs are in harmonic trine?"

Lisa stared at her, "that wasn't from the second year book."

"Hmm?" Lily looked up with the quill stuck in her mouth, "it isn't?"

Her friends slowly shook their heads.

"Oh," Lily put down the chart, "right."

"Our homework was to chart whether the moon was ascending or descending, what did you do?" Lisa grabbed for Lily's homework, managing to snatch it away before Lily could hide it. She unfurled the parchment to reveal a meticulously drawn out star chart, noting the positions of the zodiac and whether they were in harmony. A long list of numbers was written down either side and the orbits of the planets encircled the drawings of the star signs.

Lisa and Sally stared at Lily, who was squirming uncomfortably and trying to hide her face in her robes, "I like astronomy," she mumbled.

"This is amazing," Lisa said, running a finger along the sweep of Pluto, "how did you even find out half this stuff?"

Lily shrugged, some of the flush receding from her cheeks, "I was reading a third year book to try and get a better idea about the moon, and I ended up reading all of it. Then I was doing my star map and kind of got carried away."

"This isn't just third year material," Lisa said shrewdly.

"I may also have gone to the library and gotten some of the advanced books out."

"And I thought I went overboard with my Transfiguration work," Lisa finished reading the chart and rolled it back up, "that is really impressive."

Lily noticed that Sally had gone quiet, and was looking uncharacteristically still. Lisa noticed as well, and dived for Sally's bag, taking out her star chart as well. "Well this just isn't fair," she said, unrolling it to reveal an even more intricate map, "you two are so swotty."

"I like astronomy too," Sally said defensively, trying to grab the map off her friend, who kept it just out of reach.

"You've even added our birthdays to this!" Lisa said with an excited whoop, "Libras are easygoing and sociable," she scrambled across the floor to where Lily was sitting to get away from Sally's grasping, "but they are also gullible and easily influenced. Oh poor Sally," Lily was starting to grin as well, but then Lisa turned to her, "and apparently Scorpios are exciting and magnetic, but they can be secretive and obstinate, huh." She stopped jumping around for a moment, "that actually sums you up quite well."

"The first bit or the second?" Lily asked, trying to peer at Lisa's sign. "Ah," she said, "Capricorns are practical and responsible, but they can be stubborn and condescending."

"No fair!" Lisa said, rolling away, "no reading about me."

As Lisa was distracted by Lily Sally jumped over and grabbed the map, rolling it back into a tube and putting it back in her bag. "It's not finished yet," she said primly.

"Yours is," Lily said, handing Lisa back her corrected map. The Ravenclaw took it gratefully and put it back into her bag.

"So where is this secret tunnel you were so eager about?" Sally asked as they settled back at the edge of the balcony.

Lisa checked her watch, "another thirty seconds."

"What did Fred and George tell you about it?" Lily asked.

"Not much," Lisa admitted. "Be in the Astronomy Tower at eight twenty two precisely and watch the astrolabe."

"What's the time?"

"Eight twenty."

They turned around and stared at the large astrolabe that faced to the East. It wasn't used very often, but was clearly kept in good condition, and the bronze tympans glistened faintly in the moonlight. As the seconds ticked away the girls drew closer together, ever so slightly fearful for what might happen next. They had more than enough experience of the strange things that Hogwarts could do when you weren't paying attention, and had no desire to join their school mates in the Hospital Wing.

"This is creepy," Sally whispered as eight twenty one ticked by.

"I think it's exciting," Lisa whispered back.

"Watch," said Lily, pointing at the astrolabe.

The moonlight had stopped reflecting off the device, and instead seemed to almost be collecting on the dials. Pools of solid white light were building at the edge of the device, bleeding into one another until the entire outer edge was lined with a shifting haze of white. It moved like water, flowing round the edges of the astrolabe and bleeding out across the room. For a full minute moonlight gathered and grew until finally the minute ended and the light shifted.

The girls watched in amazement as the pool of light became a globe, jumping across the Tower to land on one of the orrerys that stood in the centre of the room. The globe of light was exactly the same size as the orrery, and it pulsed in a steady rhythm as it fitted itself around the orrery. For another full minute they watched as the light began to sink beneath the outer layers of gold and silver, and the orrery shone from the inside, brighter and brighter, until a small opening appeared, right over the constellation of Sagittarius.

"Woah," said Sally, standing and walking over to the small door.

"We aren't really going to go in there are we?" Lily asked fearfully as her friends both stepped closer.

"Of course we are," Lisa said, stepping right to the edge, "otherwise it wouldn't be an adventure would it?"

"We don't know what could be in there," Lily protested.

Sally nodded, "I want to find out though."

"Alright," Lily stepped next to her friends, "but don't say i didn't warn you." And together they stepped into the tunnel.

It was pitch black inside, the light from the Astronomy Tower not able to get through the door somehow. All three girls took out their wands and muttered 'lumos,' letting three bright beams show they were inside a simple stone corridor. It looked ancient, and yet somehow new, as though it had been undisturbed ever since it was first built. There were no cobwebs or spiders or dust on the bricks or the floor, and the walls were bare of tapestries or suits of armour. The colour of the stones was bright and strong, like the castle must have been a thousand years before.

"Now this is a secret tunnel," Lisa whispered.

It was a curious sensation, but inside the tunnel they felt the need to keep their voices low, and as they began to walk they trod softly and kept their eyes on the shadows. They walked until they found a set of spiralling stairs, which Lily thought would be exactly parallel to the stairs leading in to the Astronomy Tower.

"Why would they build a set of stairs and then hide them?" She whispered.

Lisa shrugged, "there's a lot of duality in magic, especially Astronomy. Maybe there had to be one set of stairs everyone knew about and one set of hidden stairs?"

"Let's keep going," Sally whispered, taking the lead as they went down the tower.

As they walked Lisa tried to work out where the stairs were. They couldn't be exactly parallel to the stairs leading up, because otherwise they would clash, but the astronomy tower was hollow in the middle, and the stairs they were on had walls on either side, so they couldn't be in the middle of the tower. But the main stairs also had windows that showed the outside courtyards, and the hidden staircase didn't have any windows, so they couldn't be on the outside of the tower either.

"Magic," Lisa said.

"What?"

"You were just wondering where exactly these stairs are in the Astronomy Tower."

They descended into silence again as they had reached the bottom, and the corridor had changed dramatically. It now had a wooden floor, and the walls were covered in rich drapes and tapestries that showed wizard duels and ancient battles. Most of the wizards seemed to be using wands that looked more like tree branches, but here and there were wizards wielding staffs and branches of trees.

"I've read about this," Lisa said reverently, looking over the intricate works, "wizards didn't trust wands at first, they thought they were too flimsy to properly direct all the magic they needed."

"Why would they think that?" Sally whispered.

"Well they were right," Lily had read about wand lore when she first got her wand, "wands could sometimes explode if they didn't have the right sort of core, or were made out of the wrong tree type. A staff would never explode."

"So why did they change?"

"Wands could make you more powerful, if they were made right," Lisa moved on from the tapestry and they carried on further down the hall, "staffs always had a limit."

They turned a corner and stopped abruptly, for they had walked out into what seemed like an elaborate dining hall, dimly lit by a faint blue glow. It seemed to Lily that there should have been a hundred ghosts in the room to produce such a bright light, but save for hushed whispers in the darker corners there wasn't anyone else there.

The initial shock overcome they started to survey the room, taking in the elegant chandeliers that hung from the ceiling and the lush silk of the table cloths. It was a beautiful dining room right out of history, but there was an air of sadness to it.

"Elizabethan," Lisa whispered.

Lily looked back where she was examining a portrait of an austere older woman, "what?"

"The style is Elizabethan, that corridor looked like medieval, and the stone before that could have been a thousand years old. We're moving through history.

"Is that supposed to comfort me or worry me?"

"It's just an observation."

"So where do you think we end up?"

"Hopefully the tunnel will end before we reach the future," it was very hard to tell if she was being sarcastic or deadly serious.

They walked on, trying to ignore just how deeply creepy the hall was, and they passed through the door at the other end into much more familiar settings. The floors were now carpeted in heavy shag and there were large mirror along the corridor. From ahead they could hear the sounds of an old fashioned radio playing, and the sound was a comfort in the silent halls.

"We must be nearly to the present," Lisa said as they crept along, grateful that the carpet now masked their footsteps.

"I think I know this song," Lily said, "my parents really like it."

"Come on," said Sally, taking the lead once more.

They came to the end of the corridor and pushed open a solid oak door to reveal a lavish room, decorated with antique clocks and bookshelves full of every tome imaginable. It was very obviously a reading room, but it was more homely and comforting than Lily would have imagined. She understood immediately why Fred and George had told them to find it, and the look of wonder on Lisa's face confirmed her suspicions.

"It's perfect," Lisa breathed, stepping over to a bookshelf and running one hand along the leather spines.

Sally was examining a painting of Hogwarts Castle. "How did Fred and George even find this place?" She asked.

"How do they find anything?" Lisa had moved over to one of the wide armchairs that sat near the fireplace, "they look everywhere."

Lily was still standing in the door, not quite sure if what she was seeing was real. Lisa had already chosen a book and was settling into a chair while Sally poked around the corners of the room, unearthing the wireless which was now playing a jazzy tune about 'filling my cauldron with love.'

"What are you waiting for?" Lisa asked, looking over to her friend.

Lily took a tentative step into the room, waiting a little while before deciding that it wasn't going to disappear. She walked over to Lisa, going via the bookshelves and noting that they were stocked with children's classics as well as more modern books. She thought about taking the copy of _The Adventures of Barnabus Stump_ that she saw, but settled instead of sitting in the chair next to Lisa's as Sally took the third chair.

"Okay," she said when they were all settled, "I want to try something." There was wood already in the fireplace, and she took out her wand and pointed it to the stack. "Incendio!" She cried, and the end of her wand sparked and sputtered out.

"That's a fourth year spell," Lisa pointed out, "you won't be able to do it."

"The light's just right anyway," Sally said, "read to us Lisa?" She asked.

"Really?" Lisa cocked an eyebrow at her friend.

"You're the one with the book. Please read it?"

"Alright," the Ravenclaw pushed back the cover and cleared her throat, "chapter one, the wrong door." Lily and Sally both got comfortable. "This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child."

* * *

It felt like many hours later when Lisa looked up and saw that Sally had fallen asleep. Lily was still awake, leaning back against her chair, both her legs curled up underneath her as she stared through Lisa, obviously miles away in the magical land of Narnia.

"It's late," Lisa whispered.

Lily nodded, slowly coming back to the reality of the magic castle they were in. "I know, but I don't want to leave."

"It does feel safe here doesn't it?"

"I wonder if we could stay the night here," Lily was reminded of the room she had found the year before, a magical room that she had never been able to locate again, which had been perfectly sized for her, with a perfect bed and a perfect bookshelf and had been a perfect refuge in a time of need. There was something of that comfort coming over her again, just from being with her friends.

"I think I saw blankets over in that corner when I was looking earlier," Lisa said, and they went to collect some. While Lisa got herself comfortable in her chair Lily draped a blanket over Sally, tucking it snugly under her shoulders. Then she went to her chair and curled herself up like a cat, the blanket draped over her like a shroud.

"I'm glad you're my friends," she said softly, not knowing whether she wanted Lisa to hear or not. Of course she had, and looked up with a quizzical expression.

"Why would you say that?"

"I don't know," Lily admitted, "but I'm glad you are."

Lisa reached out her hand, and Lily took it, the two of them intertwining their fingers. "I'm glad you're our friend as well," the Ravenclaw said.

They were both starting to feel tired now, but they kept their fingers together as they drifted away into sleep.

**AN:-** Oh so much to talk about! Lily and Terry's little moment at the beginning was what kind of kicked this whole thing off (it was supposed to be the Christmas chapter) and then I just ran with it. And of course Lisa has a little crush on Michael, I think that should have been clear from the Quidditch match.

So hey, the girls have birthdays which I've kind of forgotten to mention until now. Back when I was writing book one they were kind of placeholder birthdays but then I looked at the star signs and decided they were actually kind of appropriate so they're stuck now. Sally's is in October (exact date forgotten right now) Lisa's is the 26th of December (which is the same as the friend I kind of based Lisa on, who I also mentioned in the Author's Notes for the last book) and Lily's is 4th November. Just pretend they did something on those dates okay?

I remember when my family used to go and see pantos. I actually once did see Christopher Biggins playing Widow Twankey, which won't mean anything to the Americans reading this, but hopefully some of the Brits will get it. Originally Sally was going to be a fan of Holby, but it hadn't aired back in 1992, whereas Casualty had. For the uninitiated, Casualty is a very long running British medical drama about an Emergency Recovery ward in a hospital. I don't watch it, but I am a big fan of Holby City, the spin off from 2005 onwards.

The astrolabe glowing came from the videogames again. They sometimes mark important things by making them glow, and I thought it would be a fun little nod to have the glow actually be part of the opening process. The tunnel was an idea I had kicked around of a trip through history, ending with the room the girls end up in. It was originally just going to let out at the Entrance Hall and be nothing more than a creepy tunnel but I had to put something there.

Lisa is reading from C.S Lewis' 'The Magician's Nephew'. That whole ending scene was inspired by a drawing I did of the three in armchairs, with Sally slumped asleep and Lily putting a blanket on her. Check my profile to see the link to my deviantart page where I've started to post Hogwarts Retold related art!


	16. Chapter 16

**AN:-** Sorry for the wait on this one. I was tempted to leave it until actual Christmas to post! Anyway, enjoy the latest chapter of Hogwarts Retold: Chamber of Secrets.

**Chapter Sixteen: Christmas**

"Wow," Lily was back to hugging herself and bouncing along the pavement while her friends and Mr Perks watched in bemusement. It was one of the only times they ever saw Lily looking quite so childlike, and all of them appreciated it. Lisa in particular had started to get very concerned about how Lily seemed to go everywhere with a slightly pinched look in her cheeks and bags under her eyes.

"I liked the genie," Lily was saying, "and all the magic things he could do like making Aladdin into a real prince and the songs were really really good and Jafar was just horrible he kind of reminded me of Snape a little bit…"

"Lily," Lisa caught up with her friend, "slow down, you need to breathe at some point."

Lily nodded, but her eyes were still shining and she was clearly still thinking about the movie they had just seen.

Christmas had seemed to pass in a flash for all of them. One moment they were boarding the Hogwarts Express, then suddenly it was the end of the week and they were going with Katie and Richard Turpin down to the local theatre hall where they watched the panto, which was Peter Pan. Lily hadn't quite known what to make of the whole thing, but she quickly caught on to where and when she was supposed to shout out "he's behind you!" and to join in with the songs, even though she didn't know any of them. Lisa and Sally assured her that they were very popular muggle songs, but she didn't quite see why the Lost Boys of Never-Never Land would be singing a song called Achey Breaky Heart.

Then it was time to leave the Turpin's and return home, where her mother was a lot more relaxed than she had been over summer, and her father had much more free time. _Alec Thorne and the Twelve Treasures of Britain_ had shot into the top ten wizarding book charts, and the radio play had been scheduled for a repeat in the New Year it had proved so popular. At the same time, the Nimbus 2001 had earned a good reputation for her father's firm, and had brought them new work from several leading broom manufacturers.

"It's going to be a good year," Vincent Moon predicted happily as the family sat around the fire on Boxing Day listening to Celestina Warbeck. Lily thought her parents were acting like silly teenagers, and they had both had a little too much wine. They were sharing one poofy armchair, Selene sitting on her husband's lap and running a hand over his stubble. Lily was quite happy to ignore them and focus on the new book Sally had brought her, _A Guide to the Night Sky._ It was a muggle book, but it was fascinating to read about things from that perspective. Apparently it was called 'science,' and seemed to be studied as hard by muggles as people like her father studied Arithmancy.

On the twenty-eighth she had been apparated to Sally's house, where she got to meet her brother again. Henry didn't seem to have grown very much to her, and was still as big a bundle of energy as he had been the previous Christmas. He still hadn't shown any sign of magic, and all three of them knew that Mrs Perks was very grateful for that, because he was enough of a handful without it. It had been decided that Sally was now old enough to start babysitting him some of the time though, which meant that Lily and Lisa had to as well.

"How do your parents do it?" Lily asked, collapsing onto the mattresses on Sally's floor at the end of the second day. They had spent the day at the park, and while Mr and Mrs Perks had been there, they had spent most of the time sitting on a bench enjoying watching the children play. Henry had been everywhere, choosing to climb to the top of the swings instead of swinging on them, then deciding he wanted to be spun as fast as possible on the roundabout. It had taken all three girls chasing after him for nearly two hours to stop him hurting himself and to keep him interested.

Sally shrugged, lying spread-eagled on her own bed, "practice."

"Well do you think maybe we could be excused tomorrow?" Lisa would have collapsed as well, but Lily was half across her bed as well. "Move lazybones," she said, prodding Lily with her toe.

Lily shrugged her friend off, "I never had that much energy when I was seven."

Lisa flopped next to her and tickled her until she had moved onto her own mattress, "I'll get you for that," Lily muttered as she buried herself into her covers.

"You can't even move," the Ravenclaw pointed out with a smug smile.

"Well neither can you," Lily countered.

"We really need to work on your banter," Lisa said dryly, pulling her covers over herself as she changed into her pyjamas.

"Can we do it tomorrow?" Sally groaned, sliding under her own covers fully dressed, "I need like twelve hours of sleep before I can deal with my brother again."

"Doesn't he always wake up at six exactly?" Lisa frowned, trying to remember what time it had been the year before.

"Always."

"Well it's like nine o clock now; we'll only get like ten hours."

"Nine," Lily corrected sleepily, yanking her nightgown down to her knees.

"Oh," Sally was already close to gone, "well that's nice."

"I'm actually pretty tired as well," Lisa confessed, rolling over and plumping her pillow up, "g'night."

"Night," Lily said, switching off the lamp that was on in the corner of the room.

And now it was suddenly three days later and they were heading back to the car from _Aladdin._

"Where did the holiday go?" Lisa lamented as they trudged through the slush.

"Well first we went to your house," Sally said, "then we all split up for Christmas Eve, and then everyone came round my house and we just watched a movie at the cinema."

"Thank you," Lisa drawled.

"Glad to help."

Lily was still in post-Disney happiness trance, and had now started waving from side to side, humming, "Hm hm hmmmmm hm hm hmmmmm."

"Are you humming one of the songs?" Lisa asked.

Lily nodded, "how was it again? I can show you the world?"

Sally trotted next to her, "shining shimmering splendid."

Lily turned to face her friend, "tell me princess now when did you last let your heart decide?"

"A whole new wooooorld," they caterwauled together, looking to Lisa, who was shaking her head.

"A new fantastic point of view," Sally coaxed.

After a pause in which she stared at them with her best McGonagall eyes Lisa shrugged, "no one to tell us no, or where to go…"

"Or say we're only dreaming…"

* * *

Back at Sally's house, the day before they would return to their homes, the girls introduced Lily to another wonder of the Muggle world. Apparently it was called 'video' and involved the other innovation, the 'television.'

They all crowded around the set at eight o clock and Mr Perks showed them how to use the machine, which Lily was far more interested in examining than seeing the actual videos. They eventually watched Muppets Christmas Carol, although they weren't really watching it. Instead they leaned against each other on the sofa with a big bowl of popcorn and a duvet to cover the three of them and fell asleep before it was even an hour in.

The next morning Selene apparated into the back garden at about the same time that Katie Turpin pulled the car up to the front of the house, and the three parents convened in the kitchen as the girls were bringing down their rucksacks. Selene and Katie were discussing the book they were working on while Mr Perks watched bemusedly, and as soon as Selene saw her daughter she swept her into a brief hug.

"It's so very good to see you darling," she said softly, turning back to the Perks and Mrs Turpin, "thank you for your hospitality, it is greatly appreciated."

Lily nodded to the grown-ups as well, "thank you for having me," she said.

"It's no trouble at all," Mrs Perks said, "I hope we can see you over summer as well."

"You just want someone to babysit Henry," Sally mumbled.

The three girls smiled, then hugged each other. "See you back at school," Lisa said, then added in a whisper, "we're going to map the upper floors next."

"What are you girls plotting?" Katie said, coming over to pull Lisa away, "and I do hate to run, but we have to get going if we're going to get Lisa ready for school."

Mrs Perks nodded, "don't worry about it; we have to go out and buy some new potions ingredients tomorrow." She still sounded wary of the concept, and Lily knew that she still hadn't fully adapted to the idea of the wizarding world, despite the five witches currently occupying her kitchen.

"Then we shall take our leave as well," Selene held out her arm and Lily looped her own arm onto it. "Farewell," Selene said, leading Lily out into the garden. They were three steps out of the door when she turned on her heel and a moment later they were stepping onto their own patio, her father looking up from his newspaper and smiling.

"Did you have a good time with your friends?" He asked as Lily sat down in the chair next to him and waited for her stomach to stop churning.

"We watched a movie and a video and television," Lily informed him, "the muggle world is weird, but I like it."

Vincent Moon nodded, "I've been making an effort to get involved with the muggles as well. I joined something called a 'Village meeting.' It's where they all gather in the church and talk about things like keeping the grass in the park cut, or making sure people don't drive too fast past the school."

"They do that?"

Vincent nodded, "I thought it was a very good idea actually. In our community so many people are allowed to get away with outrageous actions because no one stops them, but the muggles? They actually have jobs where other people clean up parks and roads."

"Well they can't just vanish their rubbish, can they?" Selene had rejoined them with biscuits and drinks, tea for her and her husband while Lily got juice. "But it is a nice idea, and if it makes you happy..." she folded herself neatly into the chair opposite her husband and sipped from her mug. Watching the two of them talk about the benefits of muggle life Lily couldn't help but notice, not for the first time, how they reminded her of cats.

Her mother was like a sleek Bombay, in her long black robes and with her black hair artfully laid over her shoulders she looked like a purebred show-winner. Her father on the other hand was more like a moggy, slouched in his chair with his tortoiseshell glasses and checkered sweater giving him the appearance of a very worn-out old tabby. Everything about them was so very different.

After they had worn themselves out bickering Selene came to help her pack while her father made dinner. They had agreed they would spend the next day at the seaside before she returned to Hogwarts for the second term.

They didn't discuss any of the things which were happening at the school. Nor did they discuss what had happened in the past. Lily got the feeling that her parents were avoiding the issue very deliberately, as they hardly even asked about the last term, only about her friends and the holiday. It almost felt like they were scared.

* * *

Platform 9 ¾ was one of the few places you couldn't apparate to in Britain, which meant they had to appear in a small alleyway just next to the station. It was well known among the Met for the large amount of drunks who spotted people 'coming out of the walls, man,' but for the wizarding world it was the preferred arrival point for King's Cross Station.

Vincent helped bring her trunk to the platform and together they loaded it onto the Hogwarts Express. That was when the Perks arrived and the girls exchanged hugs while the parents loaded Sally's trunk on as well. The Perks had to leave shortly to buy some last minute things for Henry for school, and Lily's parents went not long after, letting the girls start searching for a carriage.

The year before the train had had many empty compartments on the journey back after Christmas, but it was almost as bad as the start of the year this time. Almost every student seemed to have gone home for the holidays, and it was absolute mayhem as they fought their way through to find space. They eventually found Daphne, sitting by herself and reading _Witch Weekly, _and gratefully joined her.

Not long after Lisa arrived as well, and together they settled in for the journey, Sally and Lisa having both brought packs of muggle sweets for them to share as well as the supplies they bought from the trolley. They spent most of the time talking about their homework and pointedly avoiding the subject of the Chamber of Secrets and the attacks. None of them wanted to voice the fear they all shared that someone else had been attacked over the holiday.

At last, when the sun was set and the moon high in the sky, the train slowed and they pulled in to Hogsmeade station, filing out with the rest of the school and traipsing over to the horseless carriages. It was dreary and wet and slushy, and even as they travelled up from the village the pupils started to go quiet and the atmosphere grew heavier. The mood settled over them like a blanket, and looking up at the great castle Lily thought that even the lights of the Great Hall looked subdued and muted.

Rather fittingly they were greeted at the gates by Professors Snape and McGonagall, who between them managed to silence the final few titters and conversations as they checked students off on their registers. The final walk up to the castle was in crushing silence, after which the houses split off to go to their separate tables for the feast. Lily managed to squeeze her friends' hands and smile at them one last time before the broke apart, but then she was surrounded by a sea of green and silver. She couldn't help but sigh as she sat down to eat, _here I am again._

__**AN:-** Some stuff to talk about here.

Aladdin is the Disney film they see this year, and yes this is going to be a thing that they do every year (or at least every year that Disney released a film) The Muppets Christmas Carol was also released in 1992, but it probably wouldn't have been available on video by December. It's artistic licence, sue me, I love that film. Did anyone else think of Jafar when they first read Snape? He even had a snake motif.

Pantos used to be a thing my family did all the time. They are a very very British institution though, so a little explanation is in order. Basically it's an old fashioned Music Hall-style play, usually following one a very traditional story, Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Peter Pan etc. They try and get some reasonably well known British TV Actor or Panto actor (yes, we Brits have well known panto actors, roll with it) and feature lots of pop culture references from the year and modern pop songs that everyone is expected to sing along to, usually while doing actions and moving around. Lots of audience participation, including the origin of the 'He's behind you' shout and 'Villain exit stage left' convention. If you're ever in Britain over Christmas, try and attend one, they are good fun.

Maybe it's just me but I remember trying to keep up with seven year olds as being exhausting, even when I was only twelve. Henry will be growing up at some point. He may even be a major character, I haven't decided yet.

That whole bit with Lisa being reluctant to sing at first was pretty much nicked from Castle. I was watching _Last Call_ at the time, thought it would be fun. And after them falling asleep in front of the telly I think I have more fanart to draw...

Cats. There is no such breed as 'tabby' or 'black' it refers to the colour (obviously). A British Bombay black is what i consider the archetype black cat. Sleek, smooth, fastidious, amber eyes, the whole dealio. A moggy is British slang for a mongrel cat, a mixed-breed. The whole cat metaphor thing was actually planned, believe it or not, and I do have the cat types of the main three girls as well.


	17. Chapter 17

**AN:-** In order to be better safe than sorry, this chapter may contain triggers for bullying and abuse.

**Chapter Seventeen: Rumour Mill**

The big news, as they settled back into the usual routine of life at Hogwarts, was that Hermione Granger wasn't in class. A steady stream of students began to file past the Hospital Wing, trying to get a look at her petrified body. Lily thought it was really morbid, especially as anyone could tell she wasn't petrified just by looking at Harry Potter and the other one. The two boys didn't seem to have been affected at all by their friend's not showing up for class, so obviously it was nothing for anyone else to worry about.

Lisa was the one who finally heard what had happened, and filled the others in as they were doing their homework one night. "Morag managed to get a look at her," she said, "apparently she had cat ears and fur on her face."

"Wow," Sally said, eyes wide, "I wonder what happened to her?"

"Maybe a Transfiguration spell went wrong?" Lily asked, scanning her Potions book for the next step in the Wideye Potion.

"But that would be human to animal transfiguration," Lisa said, "we don't start that until sixth year."

"Hermione's always been clever," Sally countered, "maybe she was trying it early?"

"Well whatever happened it definitely went wrong." Lisa scrawled another paragraph of her _History of Magic_ work, then set her quill down and folded her arms on the desk, "now, about the map."

All three of them leaned in together to talk in whispers. There wasn't anyone else around, but it felt more like they were plotting something if they whispered.

"I thought we could go out tomorrow and do the Astronomy Tower, if you're in?"

They both were of course, and since the next day was Saturday they decided to go right after breakfast. It turned into a whole day in the tallest tower, wrapped up in their warmest clothes to keep out the blasts of cold January air, and they finally left for the evening distinctly satisfied with their progress. Over the holiday they had spent some time developing a system to show which doors were secret, and Sally had written down all the instructions for opening the secret Astronomy passage as well. The map may have only had two floors finished, but when Lily had looked over it she felt like she was looking at something out of one of her mother's books, a treasure map to amazing discoveries and adventures.

Since that sounded silly even in her own head though, she didn't mention that to Lisa and Sally.

As they made their way down from the tower, avoiding the staircase which now pointed to a wall pretending to be a door, they heard shouting below, and hurried down to see what was going on. As they reached the fourth floor Filch came storming out of a corridor below them, ranting about extra work and mopping and 'blasted ghosts.' A second later they saw the distinct black and red heads of Potter and his friend going into the corridor.

"Why is it that they could be doing the most innocent thing in the world, and I still think they're up to something?" Lisa asked as they leaned against the banister on the fourth floor.

"Because last year they were actually foiling a plot by Quirrel the whole time to try and bring back Voldemort by stealing a magical whatsitmajig?" Sally asked brightly.

"Yeah," Lisa drawled as Lily covered a smile, "that'd be why."

They watched until Potter and the other one re-emerged, but there was no indication of what they might have been doing. "Isn't that where Mrs Norris was attacked?" Lily asked softly.

Sally nodded, "Filch's been sitting in the corridor almost every day since it happened," she sounded a little sad, "he must have really loved Mrs Norris."

"Just because he likes his cat doesn't mean I have to like him," Lisa said. "Anyway, doesn't look like anything interesting is going to happen here, so I'll say goodnight." She and Sally exchanged hugs, then she and Lily traded a nod of the head each, and the Ravenclaw went back up to her dormitory.

Lily and Sally went back down to the dungeons, Sally chattering happily about the map they were making and how much fun she was having drawing it while Lily enjoyed listening to her friend, then at the bottom of the stairs they hugged and went to their separate dorms, the incident with Filch and Harry Potter entirely forgotten.

* * *

As January ended the sun returned, and for Lily it also brought the return of bullying, although it took a while before Lisa realised what was going on. It was Sally who pointed out that she was a lot quieter than usual, even when it was just the three of them, and Lisa did notice that she wasn't answering questions in Herbology anymore, but it wasn't until she caught Morag and Padma whispering something about 'Lily Moon' in the Common Room that she found out the truth.

"What's going on?" She asked bluntly, sitting down in the chair next to them.

They both clammed up immediately.

"Don't try and pretend like nothing's happening, I heard you say Lily's name."

"That was nothing," Morag said.

"And the giggling in Herbology when she put her hand up to ask a question? That was nothing as well?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Lisa was starting to get irritated, "tell me or I'm going to Flitwick."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

After a very significant look, Padma finally spoke, "we just heard something about Lily was all."

"What did you hear?"

"Well Hannah Abbot was saying in Defence that Lavender told her that she had heard Pansy saying that she had seen Lily with an older year boy."

Lisa was confused, "Lily has friends in Slytherin who are older years."

"She was kissing this one," Morag said.

"Do you know about it?" Padma asked, "we wanted to know and you're her friend and she would tell you stuff like that."

"Why did you want to know?"

Morag shrugged, "because it's good gossip."

"It's not really your business though is it?"

"You don't know anything do you?" Morag said shrewdly.

Lisa stood, fuming, "I wouldn't tell you even if I did. It's got nothing to do with you."

The next day she was sitting with Lily and Sally in the library and decided to bring it up. "I heard something from one of the girls in Ravenclaw," she said casually, waiting until Lily had put her quill down before continuing. "She said you had a boyfriend in the older years?"

To her surprise Lily's eyes filled with tears and she bit her lip hard to keep from crying. Sally pulled her into a hug immediately, stroking her hair gently and cooing nonsense in her ear. Lisa dragged her chair over as well and started patting Lily's back, "what's wrong?" She said softly.

With a visible effort Lily brought herself back under control, "it's Pansy of course," she said, her voice thick. "She started this whole ru-rumour about me and some older year, and n-now everyone's whispering and laughing and t-talking about it behind my b-back."

"Ssh," Sally said, glaring at Lisa, "it's okay, no one really believes it."

"Ravenclaw does," Lily mumbled into her friend's shoulder.

"Not for long they won't," Lisa said harshly, "I'm not going to let them."

"And I'll tell all the Hufflepuffs it's just Pansy being nasty," Sally reassured her. "Soon everyone will stop talking about it and things will go back to normal."

* * *

They didn't.

Despite Lily having told Morag and Padma in no uncertain terms that they weren't to talk about it, she knew that they did, and that they had told the boys in their year. The Hufflepuffs, when they weren't following Ernie's lead and having a go at Potter, were also joining in. The Slytherins were being their usual unpleasant selves and every day they could see Lily getting worse and worse. She always looked like she was on the verge of tears, or like she had just been crying, and she had stopped eating again.

Sally took to sneaking food everywhere she went and practically force-feeding Lily whether she wanted to eat or not. Lisa was about one frayed nerve away from hexing everyone in Ravenclaw and all her house mates knew it. All the tension that had built up from the attacks was getting released all at once, and Lily was right at the centre of the gossip.

One night Fred and George joined them in the Library and spent the entire time trying to make Lily laugh, eventually getting themselves thrown out without so much as a grin. Lisa was grateful to them, but it was a sign that the rumour had spread to the older years as well, which made it so much worse. The story had gotten worse as well, and when Lisa overheard Lavender and Parvati talking about something Lily had supposedly done she had needed to restrain herself to keep from jinxing them.

Despite Sally and Lisa's best efforts they couldn't keep Lily's spirits up, and once more her grades plummeted and her health was getting worse. February arrived and the rumour still hadn't stopped when Lily got ill, but she point-blank refused to go to the Hospital Wing. She stopped joining them at the Library and Daphne came one night to tell them that Lily refused to leave her bed except for classes anymore.

Sally was frantic with worry, and Lisa was tempted to join her, but she knew a level head would be better than panic. At last she made good on her threat and went to Flitwick.

"Is this about Lily Moon?" The wizened old teacher asked as she knocked on his door.

Lisa nodded, "someone's been spreading a horrible rumour about her, and it's all over the school and I don't know what to do."

Flitwick sighed heavily, and for a horrible moment Lisa thought he was going to say he didn't have an answer, but then he slid off his chair and walked over to her, "I am going to go and talk to Professor Snape right now. Please be sure we will sort this out."

For the next two days Lisa didn't hear anything. Lily still looked gaunt and pale, and wasn't talking to anyone, but the rumours also seemed to have stopped. Her own house wasn't talking to her anymore because she had spoken to Flitwick, but she could handle that. Sally reported that the Hufflepuffs had also stopped talking about it, at least around her, and that Sprout had given them all a talk about bullying and how Hufflepuffs didn't do it.

At lunchtime on Tuesday Sally came rushing up to her as they were entering the Great Hall, looking scared, "Lily's been taken to the Hospital Wing," she said.

"What?" Lisa dragged her over to the statue of the Architect, "what happened?"

"We were all in Charms and Pansy said something to her and she exploded."

"Sally, slow down, tell me what happened."

"She was just shouting and shouting for Pansy to shut up and her wand started to spark and then it exploded and she fainted and Flitwick took her to the Hospital Wing and he's got Pansy in detention and we have to go and see her."

Lisa was already moving, pulling her friend behind her as they sprinted up to the Hospital Wing as fast as they could run. They found Flitwick just leaving; Professors Snape and McGonagall were with him.

"Ah," said McGonagall, "I wondered when we would be seeing you two."

"Please can we go in and see Lily?" Lisa said.

"Miss Moon is in no condition for visitors right now," Snape said softly.

"Please we have to see her we need to know she's okay," Sally was speaking so fast the words started to blur together.

McGonagall considered them, then looked to Flitwick, "what do you think Filius?"

"I think they are Lily's best friends and deserve to see her," he piped, giving Snape a dirty look. "Of course you may go in girls."

They rushed past the teachers and into the hospital wing, spotting Madame Pomfrey leaning over Lily and giving her a potion of some sort. They hurried over to the side of the bed, ignoring the matron telling them to stop running, and looked down at their friend.

Up close Lily looked even worse than Lisa had thought. She was so thin her robes were hanging off her, and her skin looked pasty and sallow. "Is she going to be alright?" Sally asked.

Madame Pomfrey nodded, "she'll need a few days of rest but she should be just fine."

"Can we stay with her?" Lisa asked.

"You can stay until the end of lunch," Madame Pomfrey said, then bustled away to give them some privacy.

Lily was asleep though, and spent the rest of lunch that way. It was only very reluctantly that the girls left, but Madame Pomfrey assured them they could come back after school and see her in the evening if she was well enough.

As fate would have it Lisa's very next lesson was History of Magic with the Slytherins, and she spent the entire time distracted by Pansy, who was laughing it up with some of her friends. At the end of the lesson Lisa followed her until she was alone and grabbed Pansy by her robes, pulling them both into a hidden passageway.

"What's the big idea?" Pansy shrieked as Lisa drew her wand and pushed the Slytherin against the wall.

"The rumour stops," Lisa said, "right now, or else."

"Or else what?"

"Or else I'll show you what happens when you actually learn how to use jinxes instead of just reading the names. All that stuff you've done to Lily? I'll do it all back at you, but I'll do it properly."

"You wouldn't dare, you'd get in trouble."

Lisa shoved her again, "just try me Parkinson."

And before she could do something she really would regret she snatched her bag up and left Pansy alone in the passageway.

**AN:-** Yeah, **this **wasn't hard to write at all.

As a guy being bullied mainly by guys rumours and gossip weren't the biggest concern for me, and for me the biggest concern was the isolation and 'casual' abuse. ie. 'let's just throw a rugby ball at his head when he walks by, that's not bullying, it's funny.' But I wanted to try and represent the ways that girls bully each other, which I am given to understand does include spreading rumours and gossip. I say this chapter _may_ contain triggers because I don't know if I wrote it well/realistically or not. I know it brought back some very bad memories for me, and frankly that's enough.

I know some people will take issue with my having the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws join in, but I do have some justifications:

1. They don't know it's a lie. They just heard someone telling the story of how Lily was caught with an older year. Some of the students discussing it might even think it's cool, not knowing the effect it has on Lily.

2. They may be students of the 'nice' house or the 'clever' house but they're still people, and hormonal adolescents at that, they're going to find stuff like this interesting. It's just that when the Hufflepuffs realise that it's upsetting Lily they'd stop, whereas the Slytherins would keep going.

I really wanted to show Flitwick being a 'teacher' teacher. Really taking command of a bad situation and being a responsible adult about it. I see him represented too many times as being really laid back and fun loving like so many 'cool' teachers (who usually teach English and Geography I've found) so I wanted to show him being the sort of adult figure you'd actually trust to get things done.

Switching to Lisa's POV was just because I couldn't write this as Lily. A mixture of it being genuinely too painful and not being able to have the distance required for the narrative to make sense. So I took a step back both emotionally and narratively and gave Lisa the viewpoint.

That bit at the end is partially based on a girl I knew at school who was so badly bullied she ended up in our on-site med bay (it was a boarding school) because she hadn't eaten or really slept in nearly a week. It was really quite scary because she fainted in the middle of an assembly and was carried out by all the senior staff.

Reviews are an author's bread and butter, feed me?


	18. Chapter 18

**AN:-** Nice long chapter to make up for the last two being so short.

**Chapter Eighteen: Valentine's Day**

Things improved a little bit over the next few days. Professor Sprout was heard telling Filch that the mandrakes had finally started to get acne, a sure sign that they were closer to maturity. And there hadn't been an attack since Justin and Nearly Headless Nick. Lily was out of the hospital wing by Friday, and Pansy was leaving her alone. Peeves was back to his usual horrible self, and his 'Oh Potter you rotter' song was surprisingly catchy.

Lockhart of course took this to mean that things were at an all time high, instead of the merest sliver of optimism beginning to shine through, and what Lisa overheard him telling McGonagall outside Transfiguration chilled her blood. "I don't think there'll be any more trouble, Minerva," he said, tapping his nose and winking in that infuriating way he had. "I think the Chamber has been locked for good this time. The culprit must have known it was only a matter of time before I caught him. Rather sensible to stop now, before I came down hard on him.

"You know, what the school needs now is a morale-booster. Wash away the memories of last term! I won't say any more just now, but I think I know just the thing…"

_Well doesn't that sound ominous?_ Lisa thought as they filed into the class.

* * *

That pessimism was rewarded on February fourteenth, when she walked into the Great Hall only to be assaulted by a garish display. The sound of harps wafted over her and everything smelled of pink. When her eyes finally stopped watering and went down to merely stinging she surveyed the scene.

Everywhere she looked it was flowers or hearts, and everything was pink. The plates were pink, the banners were pink, the flowers and the hearts which were drifting down from the ceiling and getting caught in people's hair were pink. And at the centre of the staff table was the man himself, blending into the background in the most horrible neon pink robes she could have imagined. Any idiot would have known they would clash with his hair and his face and his teeth, but even the wisest wizard couldn't have guessed just how badly.

Obviously he was smiling and waving at everybody who caught his eye, Lisa found herself making a concerted effort to do the opposite of course, but the other teachers looked murderous. Lisa made her way through the haze of shimmering crepe paper and lanterns filled with pink flames and slid herself onto the bench next to Padma. Things were still tense in Ravenclaw after the debacle with Lily but they were starting to talk to her again at last.

"What's going on?" She asked as she brushed glitter off a slice of toast and found a knife which hadn't been completely covered by the little confetti hearts.

"Lockhart's going on," Padma seemed to have come over all giggly for some reason, and was batting her eyelids at Michael Corner, who remained blissfully oblivious. Looking up and down the table revealed that many of the girls had the same dreamy look on their eyes, and one or two of the boys as well.

"Please tell me you're not falling for this charade?" Lisa said as she spread butter on her toast. She briefly considered the jam, but it seemed the only flavour available was pink. Oh alright probably it was strawberry or cherry or some other appropriate colour but she suddenly didn't feel very much like indulging even the slightest hint of Lockhart's holiday.

Padma wasn't paying her any attention, still trying to catch Michael's eye. Lily shrugged and started looking over the other tables for her friends, spotting Sally in an instant. The Hufflepuff was clearly in her element, and had even started to gather various Valentines related items around herself. She even had a few cards propped open in front of her bowl. When she spotted Lisa watching her she waved energetically and bounced a little in her seat.

Having waved back Lisa tried to find Lily, eventually settling on a small hunched figure on the Slytherin bench, her long hair loose so it covered her face almost entirely. Lisa considered getting up and heading over, but before she could one of the older year boys moved down to sit by Lily. She wondered whether this was the ever elusive Terence she had heard about.

Lockhart was waving for attention, and despite her misgivings Lisa actually put down her toast to listen. "Happy Valentine's Day!" He shouted. "And may I thank the forty-six people who have so far sent me cards!" Lisa swallowed the urge to gag at that thought. "Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all — and it doesn't end here!"

With a clap of his hands the doors to the entrance hall burst open and a dozen dwarfs marched through the door looking about as pleased as Snape and McGonagall. These dwarfs had even been outfitted by Lockhart, who had added golden wings and harps to create something that was probably supposed to resemble cupid, but instead merely resembled a mess.

"My friendly, card-carrying cupids!" beamed Lockhart. "They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines!" Lisa's eyes went wide and she shot a glance to the Slytherin table, picking Pansy out immediately. The Slytherin girl didn't seem to be thinking of bullying though. In fact she had a strange soppy expression on her face. "And the fun doesn't stop here! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion!" Professor Snape delivered a glare that by rights should have set Lockhart on fire. "And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!" Lisa felt for her House Master as he buried his head in his hands and tried to hide behind the table.

McGonagall had apparently had enough, and now stood, clapping for attention. Lockhart looked affronted, but a second glance at McGonagall's face made him think better of saying anything more.

"Naturally," McGonagall said coldly, "we will be happy to support Professor Lockhart in his endeavours to raise our spirits," it felt to Lisa very much like the word 'failed' should have been included somewhere in the sentence. Possibly several somewheres. "But in this time of revelry and merriment we must still conduct our classes, and so I would remind students that disrupting these classes, whether with cards or..." she paused for a second too long, "cupids," and there was the slightest shudder as she said it, "is against the rules, and will be dealt with most harshly." For some reason Lisa found herself looking to Fred and George, who were looking as though Christmas had come early.

McGonagall sat and people started to chatter again, and Lisa distinctly heard some older years talking about who they were going to send the singing cupids to later in the day. _This is going to be fun._

* * *

It was pandemonium for an entire day. No-one had paid attention to McGonagall's warning, and so all throughout the day the dwarfs came barging into classrooms with their harps and their raspy voices, singing off-key valentines about roses and shimmering potions. It quickly became apparent that while some people were taking the singing valentines very seriously, there were many more students who were taking the opportunity to have as much fun as possible. Lily heard more renditions of 'Violets are red, Roses are blue, I'm a schizophrenic, and so am I,' than any other poem that whole day.

She spent most of the day keeping her head down. Pansy might have stopped spreading the rumour, but as she saw several times people were taking advantage of the singing valentines to pull pranks on people. As she was lined up waiting for Defence Against the Dark Arts she even saw one pulled on Harry Potter.

There was some commotion happening further up the corridor, and she could hear one of the dwarfs clearly trying to deliver its message. There was a shattering of ink bottles and everyone cleared away, giving Draco Malfoy space to drawl, "what's going on here?"

Lily looked round and saw Harry Potter on the floor, trying to stuff his books back into his ripped bag. Malfoy's face was quickly splitting into a grin and she knew he was contemplating all the wonderful opportunities for jokes that were building as the dwarf finally collared his prey, sitting on his ankles to deliver the valentine.

_His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad,_

_His hair is as dark as a blackboard,_

_I wish he was mine,_

_He's really divine,_

_The hero who conquered the Dark Lord_

Even Lily couldn't resist chuckling a little at that. It sounded more like the sort of thing that Fred and George would cook up than a real valentine. One of the Gryffindor prefects was trying to break up the crowd, but it was difficult when some of them were sinking to their knees laughing

"Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now," he said, finally managing to shoo some of the younger students away. "And you, Malfoy —"

Malfoy grabbed something off the floor and Harry's expression changed, becoming suddenly very serious. "Give that back," said Harry quietly. It was a tone of voice Lily recognised. Last year it had been followed by Potter getting on a broomstick and chasing Malfoy into the sky to get a Remembrall.

"Wonder what Potter's written in this?" The crowd went very very quiet, staring at the two. Several people backed up to avoid getting caught by any spells.

"Hand it over, Malfoy," the prefect said.

"When I've had a look," said Malfoy, waving the diary tauntingly at Harry.

The Gryffindor prefect got as far as, "as a school prefect —" but Harry had already drawn his wand and was pointing it at Malfoy.

"_Expelliarmus!" _The diary flew out of Malfoy's hand and arced gracefully through the air, where Harry's red-headed friend caught it with a huge smile on his face.

Several people whooped, but the prefect was not happy. "Harry!" He said loudly, "no magic in the corridors. I'll have to report this, you know!"

The crowd finally started to disperse, Malfoy taking the time to yell at one of the first year girls as she went by, "I don't think Potter liked your valentine much!"

Wondering what _that _was about, Lily filed in to Defence.

* * *

Later in the Library she filled in Lisa and Sally, who were equal parts impressed and curious. "I wonder why Malfoy said that to a first year?" Lisa wondered.

"He's really petty," Lily pointed out with a shrug, "maybe he was just trying to make her feel bad. I mean, it wasn't like he knew her or anything."

"Did she have red hair?" Sally said.

Lily nodded, "red hair, lots of freckles."

"Maybe she was a Weasley."

"Huh," Lily chewed the end of her quill, "hadn't thought of that. Malfoy doesn't like the Weasleys."

"And his dad had that big fight with the Weasleys' dad in Flourish and Blotts," Lisa reminded them.

"Yeah," Lily smiled, "that was a good day."

At that moment someone came and sat next to them on the bench, putting her books down next to Sally's and unfurling a piece of parchment. The three girls stared at the intruder in shock as she pulled out a bright orange quill and a bottle of ink. Luna Lovegood largely ignored them as she got to work writing what appeared to be Charms work, but it was impossible to tell with all of the scribbling and drawings of wands and stars. She was actually a very good artist, Lily thought.

"Hi Luna," Lisa said, slightly hesitant.

Luna looked up brightly, "hi Lisa, hi Lily, hi Sally. How are you?"

"We're... good," Lisa was looking very uncomfortable at the situation, but Sally was smiling at the first year.

"It's good to see you again Luna," she said, shuffling closer, "how's first year?"

Luna smiled dreamily, "it's louder than being at home."

"And is that a good thing?" Lily asked,

"Well it keeps the Hiisi away, but apart from that I like louder."

"What are Hiisi?" Sally asked.

Luna started drawing absently while she spoke, "they're nature spirits which protect trees and rivers and fields." She finished her drawing and held it up to show a pixie like creature hugging a dandelion.

"And they're not real," Lisa added.

"Just because there's no evidence doesn't mean they're not real," Luna said, "it just means no one's found them yet."

"Yes, but then you could just say that anything exists because there's no evidence that it doesn't," said Lisa, obviously carrying on an argument that she had had before with Luna.

"We're learning how to turn beetles into buttons," Lily pointed out, "I'm willing to believe there are still some things left to find."

"Et tu?" Lisa asked under her breath, but she smiled to take the sting out of it. Lily was still quite fragile.

"Life's more interesting when you believe in things," Luna was saying, "and magic is everywhere after all."

"Exactly," Lily said, "but right now I'm a bit more concerned about the magic of Transfiguration. What's Gamp's Law again?"

They worked their way through the difficult essay while Luna continued to doodle all over her Charms work, apparently unconcerned that the three older years weren't really talking to her. When they had finally put away McGonagall's work though she looked up at Lily, "I heard some people talking about you. At least I think it was you. Is there another Lily Moon?"

Lisa and Sally tensed while Lily stared at the table, "what were they saying?"

"Something..." Luna shrugged and carried on doodling, "I wasn't really paying attention, hey, look!" She held up her Charms work, which now had a picture of Sally, Lily and Lisa on it, with a smaller picture of Luna off to the side. "Do you want it?"

"Isn't that your homework for Flitwick?" Lisa pointed out.

"Oh I wasn't going to give him this," Luna said, putting it down again, "this was my drawing on it bit of homework. I write all my homework twice so I can be creative."

"I'd love it," said Sally, taking the bit of parchment and putting it in her bag, "thanks Luna."

The first year beamed and hugged Sally before collecting her bag and trotting out of the Library, leaving the three of them staring bemusedly at each other.

Eventually, Lily shook her head and smiled, "it's no good guys. I want her around _all_ the time."

* * *

Life at Hogwarts was finally calming down, it seemed. There had been no more attacks, making it nearly four whole months since anything had happened. Peeves had returned to his usual pranks instead of taunting Potter, the tensions between the other houses had eased ever so slightly, although Gryffindor and Slytherin were still at each other's throats, and when March finally arrived the Mandrakes threw a loud party in the middle of Lily's Herbology lesson.

"This is good!" Professor Sprout reassured her students, who were now covered in clumps of dirt and sweat. "They're almost fully grown now!" She was beaming with happiness, and later could be heard giving Filch the good news as well.

Easter Holiday came and the most Pansy Parkinson had done in a month was to throw paper at the back of Lily's head for a whole Defence class. The three girls had started going back to the Library regularly, and they had even started to map out some of the nooks and crannies, although things were made harder by the bookshelves constant shifting.

"What we need," Lisa said as they looked over their choices for third year, "is some way of making the ink on the paper move."

"And then we need to connect it to the same bit of the castle," Lily reminded her, "it's no use us being able to make the ink move if we can only do it after all the staircases have changed."

"Well then one of us needs to learn some more Charms," Lisa poked her friend with her foot under the table, making Lily squirm.

"I'm trying," she protested, "but as far as I can see those are really advanced spells. I won't be able to do them until at least fifth year. Maybe fourth if I work hard."

"Because you normally slack off so much during lessons," Lisa drawled.

"Guys," Sally was still obsessing over her choices for third year, "does Ancient Runes actually mean we get to draw the runes, or does it just mean reading them?"

"I think it's a bit of both," Lily said. Her mother had taken Ancient Runes, but then it had been compulsory. "I'm actually quite interested in it as well. Want to sign up and we can share homework if it turns out to be really hard?"

"Sign me up too," Lisa said, checking the box with a decisive motion, "we need to all do at least one subject together."

Lily and Sally ticked as well, then carried on down the list.

"I really want to do Arithmancy," Lisa said. "It just sounds really interesting."

"My dad does it," Lily reminded them, "it's not as fun as it sounds."

"Well I already think it sounds boring," Sally said, "so I'm definitely not going to sign up."

Lisa hemmed a bit and then ticked the box, "well that's done. Someone else sign up as well."

Lily had already been thinking she was going to take the subject. The way her parents talked about it had always made her curious. She shrugged and added her tick to the box as well, "well that's us in that together," she said, "at the very worst we can copy each other's work."

"Like either of you would," Sally said, "but what am I going to do?"

"Well what do you think you'd like?" Lisa said. "There's no point in picking something you're not going to enjoy."

"Well Divination looks interesting," Sally said, "but so does Care of Magical Creatures, but I don't know if I can do both."

"Sure you can," Lisa reached over and ticked the two boxes for her, then ticked Care of Magical Creatures on her own sheet, "there, I'll join you for moral support."

Lily had been staring at her own sheet, wondering whether she should take any more subjects. Technically they only had to sign up for two, but there was one more that had caught her eye.

"Whatcha thinkin'?" Sally asked, leaning over her shoulder.

"I'm thinking Muggle Studies," Lily said, her hand hovering over the page. "I want to know more, but do it properly, not just by following you two around at the holidays."

"Then sign up," Lisa said, "you'll never know until you try it."

"Alright then," she ticked the box, wishing it didn't feel like such a big deal. "Muggle Studies it is."

"That was a lot easier than I thought it would be actually," Lisa said, looking over her own sheet, "but I really don't want to do Divination, and I don't think I need to do Muggle Studies really."

"Well we're all sharing classes," Sally said, "so that'll make it much easier. And it'll be good because we'll all be together in class instead of one of us always being somewhere else."

They gathered up their forms and traipsed out of the Library, the sun just beginning to set and the lamps flickering a little as they lit themselves for the evening.

"Next year," Lisa said as they made their way to the Grand Staircase, "wow."

"What wow?" Sally asked.

"We did it again," Lisa said, "another whole year finished. Where did it go?"

"We've still got exams to do," Lily pointed out, "and the House Cup, and the Quidditch Cup."

"Yeah, but there's only one term to go," Lisa pointed out, "and then it'll be the holidays and then we'll be back and it'll be third year."

"I feel like I just watched the next six months vanish," Sally said.

"Well we just watched the last six disappear, why not the next?"

"Because I want to enjoy the next few months, and I want to do some more exploring before we go, and I want to learn some more spells, and I want to see if Lily managed to make her bunny rabbits any better."

Lily looked up from where she was deep in thought, "hmm?"

"Your bunny rabbits, the lapifors thingy you did. You haven't done it in ages."

Lily's smile was wan, "just haven't felt it lately. Maybe later?"

They had reached the staircase, so Lisa went up while the other two went down. At the bottom of the stairs, before they went to their separate dorms, Sally gave Lily a hug, "cheer up," she said, "it's almost the end of the year."

"I thought you were just saying it wasn't?" Lily said.

"Well that didn't cheer you up, so maybe it being nearly over will."

Lily smiled and returned the hug, "thanks for trying Sally. I'll see you tomorrow."

**AN:-**So after the last chapter I kind of wanted to be a bit more cheerful this time around. Unfortunately Lily wasn't letting me. Just didn't feel right to have her be happy after everything she went through so she's a bit of a downer in this chapter.

As the book once more comes to a close I have the problem of Harry, Ron and Hermione off doing their own thing which no non-canon characters can participate in, leaving me to invent my own climax to the books. Last year was understated. I don't feel like doing that again.

A bit more Lisa POV. She's a bit more cynical than the others, which is difficult to bring across in the narrative voice. Mostly her bits have more aside thoughts than Lily's POV, which show her snarky sarcasm.

A lot of this chapter was lifted directly from the book. Malfoy was there when the fight happened, so it made sense that the rest of the Slytherins were. Also, I carried on that bit from the books with Lockhart talking about Valentine's Day. I think some of the tone probably came from alittleinsane963's The Professor's Point of View. That's another good retelling of the HP books actually.

I don't know why I put Luna in this chapter. She kind of came tromping into my head demanding I write more of her so I did exactly the same thing with the girls, having her march in and just do her thing. As before all the creatures she talks about that aren't real are from actual myths and legends.

The thing I never understood about the Marauder's Map was whether it showed the changes in Hogwarts architecture or not. Since my girls are thorough, their map will. This will however necessitate me inventing some appropriate charms and spells.

Yeah, I planned out which subjects they were going to take a while back. There is method to my madness, always. Mostly this was done so that the girls could be there for the same subjects which Harry, Ron and Hermione take, so I can always have an alternate point of view on what happens in canon, even if I don't use it. Plus those subjects do seem appropriate.


	19. Chapter 19

**AN-** And now we reach the hardest part of writing these stories again.

**Chapter Nineteen: Summer**

It seemed to Lily like the entire castle was in a state of anticipation as the Gryffindor Hufflepuff match arrived, and for once it had nothing to do with the actual game. The mandrakes were nearly ready, and there hadn't been an attack in months. Some people were even starting to look cheerful again, and when the Weasley twins were given a month of detention by McGonagall for accidentally blowing up the trophy room even Lily allowed herself to think that maybe things were back to normal.

Sitting at the Slytherin table on match day she looked between all the teams. The Slytherins were of course watching Harry Potter with their usual disdain, still not having forgiven him for beating Malfoy with a broken arm. That had been a fun few weeks in the Slytherin Common Room, with Flint berating Malfoy every chance he got for having been too blind to see a snitch next to his head. Terence had even got his hopes up that he might be allowed back onto the team, but then Slytherin had won against Ravenclaw and dashed any hopes of that.

Harry Potter looked quite sick actually, but the rest of the Gryffindor team were looking upbeat and positive. If they beat Hufflepuff, not only would they be in for a sure win, but it would boost Gryffindor ahead in the House Cup as well, which added to the tension in the school. The Hufflepuff team seemed, as they always did, supremely unconcerned with anything going on around them, joking and laughing as though the day wasn't any different than the one before or the one to follow. That only left the Ravenclaws, who were watching the Gryffindors like hawks.

Lisa was sitting with her teammates. Despite only being on the reserves, the captain had told them that everyone needed to watch how the other teams played. It would help them understand their opponents, and give them ideas for how to improve their own play. Lily wouldn't have expected Lisa to get so into Quidditch, but as she got closer to moving up from the Reserves the Ravenclaw had been poring over books of strategy and history and thoroughly boring Lisa and Sally with random trivia and facts when they were supposed to be studying for the end of year exams.

Personally Lily couldn't believe that they were still having the end of year exams. She wasn't sure what she had actually learned during the year, it had been so tough. She knew not to annoy Pansy Parkinson or duel her, and she knew not to go wandering the corridors when something was out there attacking students, and she knew more about the secret passages than she had in the first year. She didn't think any of that would help her on her Charms essay though.

The Gryffindor team left first, followed by the Hufflepuffs. Sally waved to Lily and Lisa, who both nodded back, but Lisa stayed with the Ravenclaw team at the table, apparently deep in discussion about something. Lily rose and headed over to the doors where her friend joined her and the two of them walked out into the Entrance Hall surrounded by a gaggle of other students. Looking to the left Lily was just in time to see Hermione Granger's bushy head disappearing up the stairs.

"What's that about?" She asked Sally, who naturally had missed the whole thing. Once she had explained the Hufflepuff shrugged.

"Isn't that what Hermione does?" She asked, "whenever class ends and she has questions she runs straight to the Library."

"So do we," Lily pointed out.

"Yeah, but we do it so we can all meet up. She has a Common Room she could be going to."

They were out through the doors and heading down to the pitch now, and there was enough cover for Lily to pull off her robes and reveal her muggle clothes underneath. She was wearing one of the skirts Sally had bought for her over Christmas, and it was a lot shorter than she was comfortable with. It came down to her knees, and she had deliberately worn her longest pair of socks in an effort to feel like she was actually wearing clothes. Sally was wearing shorts which stopped above the knees and had bare feet, except for what she had called 'sandals.'

_Muggle clothing is weird,_ Lily thought as they filed up into the Hufflepuff section of the stands. Naturally the three of them were supporting the badgers instead of the lions.

Lisa joined them just as the teams were striding onto the pitch, Oliver Wood kicking off and heading for the goalposts. The Hufflepuff team was huddled up, having a last minute discussion as Madame Hooch brought out the crate with the balls inside. "Hufflepuff always has a team talk before a match," Lisa told them as they applauded the teams, "it seems to work pretty well."

Lily was distracted watching Oliver Wood, who was stretching in a way that was very distracting. She yelped as Sally pinched her hard and they all looked down to see Professor McGonagall striding onto the pitch, a megaphone in hand. Even from up in the stands they could see that her face was sheet white and her eyes were a little too wide.

"Oh no," Lily whispered, praying that it wasn't what she thought.

"This match has been cancelled," Professor McGonagall called through the megaphone, addressing the packed stadium. Several people booed, but Lily didn't understand why. Surely they had to know why the match had been cancelled? Oliver Wood came crashing down next to his head of house and they exchanged terse words that Lily couldn't quite make out.

Professor McGonagall returned to the megaphone. "All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"

As the rest of the students started to file back out, the boos turning to worried whispers now, Lily saw McGonagall beckon Harry Potter.

"Who could it be?" Lisa asked as they started to shuffle down the stairs with the others.

Lily felt like she was going to be sick, "Hermione Granger," she said, "she was running somewhere into the castle after breakfast, we saw her…"

"Well that doesn't mean she was attacked," Lisa said, but she had gone pale as well, "I'm sure she came out to see Potter play."

They were at ground level now, and ahead they could see McGonagall, striding purposefully through the throng of students. Trailing behind her was the familiar mop of black hair that signalled Potter, as well as the flash of red that was his friend. "It h-has to be Hermione," Sally said faintly. Lily and Lisa move close in case she fainted again, "McGonagall wu-wouldn't let Ron go as well if she w-was going to accuse Harry."

Lily had to agree, and as they made their way up to the Entrance Hall she shared a desperate look with Lisa, who for once looked just as lost as everyone else. The three girls held each other tightly before they split up to go off to their own dorms.

They weren't waiting in the Slytherin Common Room long before Severus Snape came sweeping into the room, silencing all the whispers about who had been attacked. Lily was curled up in a corner, half hidden by a curtain. Snape had a roll of parchment in his hands which he unfurled and read from without a hint of his usual sneer.

"All students will return to their House common rooms by six o'clock in the evening. No student is to leave the dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. All further Quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no more evening activities."

There was silence in the Slytherin Common Room as he rolled the parchment back up and looked from face to face, "obviously this is a matter of the utmost severity, and I must urge any student who may have seen or heard anything to come forwards and divulge their information." His gaze swept the room and Lily thought there might even have been concern there, "if these attacks do not stop," here his eyes lit on Draco Malfoy, who still somehow managed to hold his usual sneer, "there is every possibility the school will be closed."

He drew himself up to his full height and swept from the room, leaving them to talk again.

"This has to stop," one of the older years stood, and Lily realised with a start that it was the same boy who had come to Terence's defence months before. "We all know that the school is looking to us and blaming us, so we must do everything we can to stand with the school, not against them. It does none of us any good if these attacks continue."

"You're blaming one of your own?" Marcus Flint stood as well, and the two boys glared at each other from across the Common Room, "how d'we know you ain't doin' it?"

"I am a prefect," David said with every ounce of pomp he could muster, "and I wouldn't accuse any of us without cause. The Heir of _Slytherin_," he was actually very charismatic, and Lily couldn't help but stare at him, "not Gryffindor or Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. This must be one of us."

"And what about Potter?" Draco Malfoy's drawl cut over the muttering, "talking to snakes, always there when the bodies are found?"

"Malfoy if you know something tell me or tell Snape. If you don't know anything stop spreading rumours. It doesn't help anything."

The attitude in the room was against him though, and another seventh year stepped up to argue with him, followed by a sixth year girl standing up on David's side. Soon enough the entire house was at each other's throats, and Lily could do nothing but slink quietly away to the dorm, where she found Daphne already sitting on her bed, reading a letter and brushing away tears.

"Are you okay?" Lily said, sitting next to the girl and gingerly putting an arm around her. She was no good at this comforting thing, that was Sally's speciality.

"I'm so scared," Daphne said in a voice that shook. "Everyone's so angry and the school might close and I don't want it to." She leaned in to the hug. "I just wanted to learn magic; I didn't want any of this."

"Me too," Lily said, pushing back her own tears, "but don't worry. Nothing really bad can happen as long as Dumbledore's here right? He wouldn't let anyone - get really hurt," she stopped herself from saying die just in time.

"But he can't stop these attacks can he?" Daphne said, "they just keep happening and I keep worrying about what if I'm next or what if someone I know is next and I couldn't stand that."

Lily didn't have anything else to say to that, so she just hugged the girl as the lights in the dorm went out.

* * *

The next morning revealed that everyone's worst fears had come true. Hermione Granger had indeed been attacked, along with a Ravenclaw prefect. Worse than that, Hagrid had been arrested and carted off to Azkaban. But the worst news of all was that Dumbledore had been removed as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and the rumour was that Lucius Malfoy had something to do with it. Draco couldn't have looked smugger, but for the rest of the Slytherins it had now become impossible to even attend classes normally.

Most of the Slytherins were becoming bitter and resentful now, as if they had decided that since the school was going to be against them, they might as well be against the school. Incidences of fights and bullying shot up, and the teachers seemed to spend every waking minute handing out detentions and breaking up fights. Filch had completely broken down, and the castle looked more dilapidated than ever.

Lily responded by going inside herself again. She had more than enough experience of being a target, and if people like Pansy and Draco were willing to make people hate them, she definitely wasn't going to make too much noise. Most days after school she wore her muggle clothes to the Library, and it seemed that while the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in her year might not want to talk to her, at least they were willing to leave her alone.

The same couldn't be said of Malfoy, who made it a point to start gloating in one Potions lesson. Lily was only sitting on the next desk over, and with every word she shrank a little further, trying to hide behind her cauldron. The end of the lesson was approaching as he said loudly "I'm quite surprised the Mudbloods haven't all packed their bags by now. Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity it wasn't Granger —"

It was a good thing the bell covered all movement, as she almost slapped him simply out of shock.

There was of course one other person who was strutting around like a peacock, although in his case Lily was fairly sure it was ignorance instead of spite. Lockhart continued to preen about his classroom even when it was now clear that there was not a single member of the staff or student body who didn't hate him. Even the final few girls who had been swayed by his Valentine's Day surprise had finally had enough when he turned on Dumbledore and Hagrid.

"You know I could have told you it was Hagrid right from the start," he announced loudly to his Slytherins in Defence Against the Dark Arts, "he always did strike me as a bad sort."

Lily gritted her teeth and turned back to studying anything that wasn't _Gadding with Ghouls_ as he continued to march up and down at the front of the room. "And of course while it is simply tragic to see such a great wizard as Dumbledore removed from his position as well, his lack of direction over these attacks has been simply tragic. Why, if it had been up to me I would have been searching the school night and day to find the culprit." He frowned and scratched his chin, "there might be a book in there somewhere…"

"I didn't think you'd actually fought the monster?" Lily asked before she could stop herself. Several of her classmates sniggered, before they realised who had spoken of course.

"W-well of course I haven't actually faced the beast, I mean the attacker," Lockhart's chin receded a little as they all looked up at him, "but my point is that people will want to know, and there's something to be said for a view from the trenches during this troubled time."

And he spent the rest of the lesson muttering about 'Conquering the Chamber.'

It turned out that the month would be a big one for news though. It was Professor Flitwick who announced in their first Charms lesson that the end of year exams would still be going ahead as normal. "What?" Morag yelped, her wand emitting a cloud of purple smoke that enveloped Lily and Lisa as well.

"The point of coming to school is to continue your education," Flitwick explained squeakily, "despite the unpleasantness, we must continue on as normally as we can."

"Well this sucks," Lisa said to Lily as they filed out at the end of the lesson, "I thought Slytherin's foul and terrible beastie being on the loose would at least get us off doing tests."

Lisa had been acting strangely ever since the latest attack. She kept making jokes and acting brave. Lily and Sally had both noticed there was something different, but neither of them wanted to talk to Lisa about it. The Ravenclaw had a tendency to jump down their throats when she was annoyed.

They weren't able to go to the Library anymore, obviously. And the curfew made it hard for them to see each other at all outside of class. They tried their hardest to meet on the grand staircase at the end of every day as they were being shepherded back to class, but more often than not they missed each other. Lisa half-heartedly suggested sneaking out during History of Magic, but Lily couldn't bring herself to agree. The school was a very unfriendly place all of a sudden, and it was common to see full scale duels erupting between Slytherin and the other houses.

One morning at breakfast such a duel occurred when a Slytherin and Hufflepuff bumped into each other on their way in to the hall. There was barely even a word spoken between them before the wands came out and spells were flying all around them. McGonagall swept down to break it up and hauled both of them off to detention.

"It's getting bad," Terence said. "The other houses just want to throw us out of the school now. I overheard some Gryffindors talking about it in Defence."

Lily hunched deeper into her robes, wishing there was anything she could say.

**AN:-** At this point in Chamber of Secrets it's non-stop Harry and Ron action. They go to see Aragog, they go into the staff room, they go into the Chamber. So what exactly are my girls going to do? Largely cower in their dorms.

Sorry, I've got no other ideas for how to end this story. It'll probably wrap up soon enough and I'll get started on book 3. Unfortunately until at least Book 4/5 there just won't be any way of ending these books otherwise, because the endings of the books are so specifically about Harry and co.

Notes:

A lot of dialogue taken straight from the book here. Snape's speech is mostly a revised one that McGonagall gives.

I quite like David Bower-Hayne. I have plans for him...

Slytherin turn on each other, they turn on the school, they turn on everyone. I think it's fairly obvious that when students in other houses are literally calling for all Slytherins to get chucked out the other children might get a little defensive, especially when they know they aren't to blame. Lee Jordan gets cheers for suggesting they expel all the Slytherins, if that's not institutionalised bullying at work I don't know what is.

The whole Slytherin blaming each other scene was kind of based on the Council scene from the Lord of the Rings movie. Draco piping up was directly inspired by Boromir starting the argument with 'and if we fail what then?'

In keeping with the whole 'background characters theme' I did throw in a little line about Filch, who is now so distraught about having lost his cat that he has let the castle fall into disrepair. I think it's quite a nice idea (story-wise) in that he might be a curmudgeonly old goat but he still loves Mrs Norris very much. Plus the thought of the castle being grimy and dirty really adds to the feel of everything going wrong.


	20. Chapter 20

**AN:-** I hate this chapter so, so much. I'm just booting it out because I can't stand writing it anymore.

**Chapter Twenty: The Final Attack**

The exams were nearly upon them when Professor McGonagall stood up to give an announcement at breakfast. Lily was only half-awake, having spent most of the night studying, so she was startled awake when the hall erupted into noise.

"Dumbledore's coming back!"

"You've caught the heir of Slytherin!"

"Quidditch matches are back on!" Only Oliver Wood would say that of course.

McGonagall waited until the noise had died down before continuing. "Professor Sprout has informed me that the Mandrakes are ready for cutting at last. Tonight, we will be able to revive those people who have been Petrified. I need hardly remind you all that one of them may well be able to tell us who, or what, attacked them. I am hopeful that this dreadful year will end with our catching the culprit."

There was a round of cheers and applause from almost every table. Draco Malfoy was looking disgruntled but even the rest of the Slytherins were cheering.

* * *

Lily went to her morning classes feeling like she had a little ball of sunshine in her chest. Things were finally looking up, and she was sure that once the students were un-petrified Dumbledore would come back and the Heir of Slytherin wouldn't dare to attack any more people. The good feeling carried her all the way through Transfiguration, despite Pansy Parkinson flicking paper at the back of her head all the way through.

At the end of the lesson they were led out by McGonagall, who took them conga-style down through the school to Potions class. They were just passing the second floor when one of the Ravenclaws screamed.

"Calm down Miss Brocklehurst," Professor McGonagall said, halting and turning to fix them with an imposing glare, "whatever are you screaming about?"

Mandy pointed down the corridor, and they all knew she was pointing at the graffiti on the wall. McGonagall's lips thinned and she pushed her way through to the entrance, blocking it as much as she could. Lily saw Lisa pushing forwards as well, and whatever she saw made her go pale. Lily watched as McGonagall first went white, then quite green, then finally a red flush crept onto her cheeks as she turned back to the crowd, "you are all to go immediately to your dormitories," she said, her voice tight, "your house master will greet you there."

She swept into the corridor, waving her wand to make a barrier appear in the door. The students stood silently for a moment, then the whispering began, "what did it say? What's happened? What's going on?"

Soon enough they all knew that there was more writing, writing that read 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.'

Lily was so scared she was shaking, and she turned to Lisa for a comforting arm around her shoulders, but the students were dissipating already, and she just had time to see the Ravenclaw looking for her as the two houses went back to their dormitories.

She allowed herself to be drawn back to the Slytherin Common Room, barely hearing McGonagall's voice echoing around the castle, and when she was there went to the same corner she had been hiding in before. This time she was joined by Daphne, then a minute later by Terence, and the three of them sat in stunned silence as the rest of the house crowded in. There were no more jeers and smiles anymore, only fear.

After nearly twenty minutes Snape entered, looking gaunt and grim. He motioned for silence even though there was no need and stood in front of a chair. Lily noticed that he was gripping the back of it so hard his knuckles were white.

"The worst we feared has come true," he said softly. "A girl has been taken into the Chamber itself. Obviously Hogwarts must close. The train will arrive tomorrow morning to return you to London. Your parents will be informed shortly, and until then you are not to leave this Common Room. If you wish to send an owl home yourself you may do so within the hour. I will accompany you to the Owlery myself."

There was silence in the Common Room, and for the first time in a year Draco Malfoy looked scared as well. "He didn't think of this when he was gloating about Dumbledore did he?" Terence muttered. Lily thought he was probably right, but she didn't say anything. She was too concerned with Daphne, who was hugging her knees to her chest and crying softly. Lily hugged her as the rest of the house started to move off, most going to their dorms to write letters home. It was barely mid-afternoon but suddenly everyone seemed so tired.

Lily spent most of the afternoon in the same corner, alternately hugging Daphne and talking to her, trying to reassure her that of course everything would be okay. Her words sounded hollow even to her though, and Daphne eventually left to go to bed, even though it was barely evening. Terence went a short while after, managing a weak smile as he left.

She stayed up in the Common Room, not feeling sleepy at all. There were one or two older years there as well, staring blankly into space. It was too much to imagine, that tomorrow they would be going home, and after that they would never come back. She tried to think about what would happen next. Her parents wouldn't be able to teach her, and her mother's family was all European. Maybe she would be sent to Beauxbatons?

Tears crept into the corners of her eyes and she hugged her knees to her chest. Maybe she would be able to tell Lisa and Sally about Beauxbatons, and maybe they could all go there, but she didn't know. She had overheard Malfoy saying something about Durmstrangs, which didn't surprise her.

Someone came over and rested against the back of the sofa she was hidden behind. "How are you?" They said quietly, and she looked up to see David Bower-Hayes.

"I can't believe it," she said, blinking until her eyes were clear. "I don't want to go."

He nodded, looking suddenly much younger. "It doesn't seem real," he said, sliding down to the floor as well, "I've been coming here for six years; it can't be over, just like that."

"It was supposed to be getting better," she said, "the Mandrakes were almost ready, no one had been attacked, I wasn't being bul-" she stopped and looked away, but he had noticed her almost-slip.

"I wanted you to know that I tried to stop that," he said. "I know you've had a hard year, I'm sorry."

She shrugged.

He didn't seem to be able to think of anything else to say, and after a few minutes of silence he stood, "if you need to talk, I'm around."

She nodded, "thank you."

He moved back to where a girl from his year was crying softly, surrounded by her friends. The sight made Lily feel even worse. Her friends weren't even there to comfort her. Instead they were in their own Common Rooms, with their own friends. The unfairness of it kept coming back to her until she couldn't stand it anymore.

She stood up and ran for the door, ignoring the shouts of the few people who cared enough to stop her. She burst out into the dungeon and ran, not quite knowing where she was going. She found herself coming up the Grand Staircase when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Young lady, what are you doing out of your house?"

She froze and turned to see a group of teachers in the Entrance Hall. All of the housemasters were there, and several of the other teachers, all looking like they had been interrupted in the middle of a very serious conversation. She saw Snape's eyes narrow as he recognised the Slytherin colours.

"I-I," she was stammering, and suddenly her mind had gone very blank.

"Lily?" Flitwick pushed his way through from the back of the huddle, "oh dear, what's wrong?"

She didn't mean to, but there was so much kindness in his voice, and he had always been so nice and he was her favourite teacher, and suddenly she was crying, sinking down onto the steps and sobbing hard into his hands. She felt a cloak being put around her shoulders and recognised Madame Pomfrey's pink robes as Flitwick's face appeared at her eye level.

"There there," he said, patting her shoulder, "it'll all be alright."

She managed to get herself under control, "I'm sorry," she choked, "I couldn't stay there."

"I understand." Out of the corner of her eye she could see McGonagall shooting Snape a dirty look, but then there was a knock on the door and every eye turned to it.

"Enter," McGonagall said imperiously, and it seemed to release some sort of enchantment, because the great doors swung open of their own accord, and standing in the doorway was the one person they had all wanted to see.

"Professor Dumbledore," McGonagall said, relief clear in her voice. For it was the venerable old wizard who stood there, smiling as though he had not been summoned on the gravest of news, his eyes twinkling and his robes just as bright and buoyant as ever. He seemed to bring light back to the Hall as he crossed the threshold, as though the castle was finally taking a breath at his return.

"It is very good to see you all again," he said, and then his eyes fell on Lily and he swept over, ignoring the teachers staring at him in shock. "Are you alright young lady?"

She nodded mutely, hardly believing her eyes. Dumbledore was back, and he was talking to her, and she thought for a moment that she must have fallen asleep in the Common Room. "Filius?" Dumbledore was saying over her head, "do you know this young lady?"

"Lily Moon," Flitwick was saying, "I think she might need a quiet place to sit for a while."

"Lily!" Someone shouted from above them, then, "oh."

"And what exactly are you doing Ms Turpin?"

"Uhm."

McGonagall sighed, "oh just get down here girl."

Lisa came and put an arm around Lily's shoulders, and immediately things felt even better.

"Maybe the girls would appreciate some privacy?" Dumbledore said with a smile in his voice.

"Of course," they stood up from the steps, "maybe in my office?"

"Of course."

Professor Sprout had come over as well, looking exasperated, "I suppose I'll just go and fetch Miss Perks shall I?"

"If you wouldn't mind terribly Pomona."

Lily couldn't help but think that Dumbledore found the whole affair hilarious. He swept away, leading the other teachers upstairs; as Sprout went down to fetch Sally and Flitwick stayed with them.

"You really shouldn't be out of bed you know," he told the two girls as they waited.

"Sorry," Lily mumbled.

"Don't be sorry," Lisa said bossily, then to Flitwick, "I couldn't leave her alone could I?"

Lily suddenly realised that Flitwick and Lisa had talked about her before. It made her feel strangely comforted. At that moment Professor Sprout returned with a very confused looking Sally, whose face brightened when she saw her friends.

"I found her trying to sneak away from Susan Bones and Ernie MacMillan," Sprout said. "Maybe we should have a little talk about school rules?"

"Oh I wouldn't be so mad Pomona," Flitwick said, leading the way upstairs, "Minerva was just telling me that Mister Potter and Mister Weasley are both absent from their beds as well."

"Oh Merlin's Beard, whatever happened to a quiet year at Hogwarts?"

The teachers seemed to be largely ignoring the girls, which more than suited them. They were all holding each other's hands, and the warmth of her friends' fingers was cheering Lily already. She even managed to forget that Hogwarts still looked no less likely to close.

Flitwick left them in his office, saying he just had to 'pop out for a minute' before leaving them to talk.

In the end there was nothing to say though, and as she finally started to feel tiredness circling her Lily settled for leaning back in Lisa's lap and letting the Ravenclaw stroke her hair. Sally was nodding off against a chair stacked with books, and soon enough they were all three of them asleep.

* * *

Lily dreamed about being surrounded by cats.

It wasn't actually a very comfortable dream. She had whiskers in her mouth and one cat seemed to be nuzzling her leg far too hard. Still, it was a nice dream. Someone was cheering somewhere and there was a banging noise coming closer. Reluctantly she opened one eye and squinted up to see Professor Flitwick looking through the door of his office.

"Girls!" He squeaked excitedly, "girls wake up! They've done it!"

"Who's done what now?" Lisa mumbled, waking up and rubbing her face. Lily realised she had a mouthful of Lisa's hair and spat it out. Sally was lying on her leg, still sound asleep.

"They've caught the monster, they've stopped the culprit, we're having a feast. Everyone downstairs!" The little old teacher was as giddy as a schoolboy, barely able to keep still. He rushed back out and through the open door they could see a parade of half-awake Ravenclaws shuffling down in their pyjamas.

"Waz gon' on?" Sally asked, waking up at last. Her usually curly hair had gone frizzy, and was sticking out in all directions.

"Apparently there's a feast," Lisa said, trying to sit up. Lily and Sally were both still lying on her though, which made things difficult. "Oh come on you two, food! Celebrations!"

"Sleep," Sally mumbled, dropping her head again.

"Nope," Lily sat up and stretched, "I'm hungry."

"Besides," Lisa stood as well, Sally's head dropping softly to the floor, "this looks like fun."

* * *

It was unlike anything Lily had seen before.

Even the Great Great Hall Food Fight (as the twins called it) couldn't compare. Everyone was dressed in their pyjamas and half asleep as plate after plate of food materialised before them. There was no order to the food, starters arrived on the same dishes as trifles and spaghetti was heaped over marmalade toast. At the head table Dumbledore was waving to every student who smiled or waved at him and the absence of Gilderoy Lockhart was noticed by everyone.

Flitwick appeared behind them as they filed in after the rest of the Ravenclaws, beaming, "come on girls, in you go."

They huddled a little closer, Sally refusing to let go of Lily's hand. The Charms master sighed, "oh very well, just this once." He waved his wand and a table materialised at the end of the hall, tucked away in the Hufflepuff corner, with three wooden chairs sitting around it. Almost immediately a golden platter appeared in the centre of the table, piled with chocolate soufflé.

The girls sat and dug in, filling their plates first with chocolate, then a helping of shepherd's pie and baked beans. Sally dug into all of it at once, while Lily and Lisa managed to keep things mostly separate. Their goblets filled, Lily's with milk, Lisa's with orange juice and Sally's with coffee. The girls switched until they all had what they wanted and toasted the end of the year.

Over at the Gryffindor table the Weasley twins were dancing on the table, singing loudly about how Dumbledore was back and Harry was a hero and so was their brother. McGonagall was keeping an eye on them but letting them blow off steam, a minor miracle in Lily's opinion. The youngest Weasley boy was sitting next to his dancing brothers looking quite embarrassed, but also grinning to himself.

"Where's Harry?" Sally asked.

They looked again, realising that there was no sign of the shaggy mop of hair that usually signalled Potter's presence.

"Dunno," Lisa shrugged, "want some turkey?"

The party showed no signs of stopping when Harry Potter entered, his robes stained and torn but with a huge smile on his face. There was a shocked silence as he stood in the door, but then he disappeared behind almost every student in the school, including several Slytherins. He was raised up onto the shoulders of the crowd and brought over to the Gryffindor table, where he was deposited next to the Weasleys and allowed to tuck in.

The party carried on until one o' clock, when the doors opened again and Madame Pomfrey led in the unpetrified students. Hermione ran straight over to Harry Potter and the whole hall heard her shouting, "you solved it! You solved it!" Finally putting to rest the swarm of rumours which had flown around about exactly what Potter and his friends had been up to.

They carried on, all of the goblets refilling with chocolate milk whenever they ran empty, only it didn't taste like the chocolate milk Mrs Perks had given them over Christmas, it was thick and creamy and more like drinking a chocolate cake than a drink. Lily managed to drink a whole three goblets of it, to Lisa and Sally's amazement.

"You'll be sick," Lisa said as the third goblet-full disappeared down her throat.

"I couldn't possibly be sick," Lily said.

"Yay!" Sally clinked their goblets together, "you're happy again."

"Yes I am," Lily confirmed, choosing a lollipop from the assortment of sweets in front of them. "And look, Draco's furious."

They looked over to the Slytherin table, where Draco Malfoy was sitting with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed, refusing to eat and looking altogether like a petulant child. It more than made up for Dumbledore announcing that Harry Potter and his friend had earned four hundred points for whatever it was they had done. Lily had to say she thought they might just deserve it. The word was spreading that they both looked filthy because they had actually _fought_ Slytherin's monster.

"I heard it was a gigantic boar but with like tusks that poisoned you and made you all frozen," one very excited fourth year told them.

"Don't be silly," her friend said, "it was Slytherin's monster, it was obviously a snake of some kind."

"Like a gigantic snake?"

"Yes!"

"A snake, in Hogwarts for a thousand years?"

"So?"

"So snakes can't live for a thousand years, especially not in a freezing cold castle without eating."

"We live in a castle with a giant squid in the lake and centaurs in the forest and you're going to argue about a thousand year old snake?"

The three girls had been watching this in amusement, and now Sally chimed in, "maybe the Chamber of Secrets kept it alive."

"Are you suggesting that Slytherin charmed the Chamber?"

"Not at all," Lisa said, "it could have found rats and things to eat."

A Ravenclaw leaned over from the next table. "What, a gigantic snake living off rats?"

"It could live off rats!"

"It's not a question of what it eats; it's a simple question of weight ratios! A ten ton snake could not live off a three kilogram rat."

The first Hufflepuff was watching them in amazement, "Does it really matter? Harry Potter managed to stop the attacks."

They all turned back to their tables, but Lily could hear the Ravenclaw talking to his friends, "listen. In order to maintain an ideal body-eight, a snake needs to consume about twenty percent of its body week on a weekly to two weekly basis, right?"

"Do you think it really was a snake?" Sally asked as they returned to their food.

Lisa shrugged. "Don't care; it's just fun to get people in my house talking."

The feast went on all night, past Hagrid arriving at three in the morning and thanking Harry and his friend, after McGonagall announced that all the exams were cancelled (Lily was thrilled, she couldn't remember anything she'd revised), and everyone was still awake enough to applaud louder than ever when Professor Dumbledore announced that unfortunately Professor Lockhart would not be returning to them for another year.

As she whooped and cheered, enjoying the sight of Professor Sprout doing the same, Lily wished the night would never end.

**AN:-** I had to rewrite this so many times. At first they arranged to sneak out. But that didn't feel right. So then I had Lily running away, which didn't really go anywhere. Then the idea of her bumping into the teachers finally hit me, and after that it kind of all came together. Lisa of course snuck out to see Lily. And of course she had a plan to break into the Slytherin Common Room, you didn't think she was some hot-headed Gryffindor did you? (for the record her plan sucked and would never have worked, which is why I didn't write it)

Bit more of David. He'll be back next year as well. And more of my favourite teacher Flitwick. The great thing about writing him is that there is nothing in canon to say I'm wrong. I have to say I've actually really enjoyed his few scenes in this book.

As I said last time I have mixed feelings about Dumbledore. But whatever else I think of his plans, I don't believe he would just leave one of his students crying on the steps while he was all important and majestic. He may have very important things to do (meeting the Weasleys, getting his school back in order) but he still cares about his students.

More cat metaphors!

My personal headcanon: The house elves of Hogwarts were just as worried about the school closing, if not more so. Would anyone even notice if they were attacked? Where would they go if the school was no longer occupied? So when the order came for a feast in celebration of staying open they went a bit overboard, and got very confused about actually putting a real meal together. So instead they just put food on the platters, not really caring about what went where, made sure it didn't run out and everyone had enough.

I loved the little table for just the girls. I really liked the idea of all the students, including the Slytherins, because like I said at the end of the last book this was a problem that the whole school faced, not just one house or one group of people. The conversation at the end is pretty blatantly taken from Monty Python. It was supposed to be the start of a wild rumour about what the monster really was, but it started to sound too much like the Sparrow sketch, so I just made it an homage.

Only one more chapter for this one, then I'll get started on book 3


	21. Chapter 21

**AN:- **I'm sorry, but I'm like 500% done with this story now.

**Chapter Twenty-One: Going Home**

"Right," said Lisa as they gathered on the steps outside Hogwarts, "we're not going to spend the next three months just writing to each other." She handed Lily and Sally a piece of paper, "we're going to visit my nana and granddad in Germany in the next few weeks, but after that you both have to come round to my house."

Sally nodded, "my mum said we're going to Spain and I have to invite you, because you'll love it."

"I think we're going to France," Lily said quietly, "my mother has family over there. I'll let you know when I'm coming back."

"Good," Lisa sat down and looked out over the grounds, where most of the rest of the school was sitting outside and enjoying the sunlight while they could.

Sally perched on the step next to her. "So what do you think's going to happen next year?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well last year Voldemort possessed one of our teachers and tried to kill Harry Potter until Harry stopped him, this year there was a monster running around petrifying people until Harry Potter stopped it. What do you think is going to happen to Harry and his friends next year?"

"Does something have to happen to them every year?" Lily asked, sitting as well.

Sally shrugged, "maybe it can be like a Hogwarts tradition? See what Harry and his friends have done to earn them hundreds of points and win the House Cup automatically?"

Lisa frowned at her friend, "sarcasm?"

"Maybe."

"I don't think things like that happen to normal people," Lily said, "they don't have grand adventures that happen to always take exactly one year."

"Hasn't this year been an adventure?" Lisa said indignantly.

"Well I got bullied into the Hospital Wing and we seemed to spend most of the year doing nothing but talking," Lily drawled.

Lisa and Sally were staring at her in shock, "what?"

"You talked about it."

"Oh," she hunched her shoulders up a little, "I was trying to make a joke."

Lisa frowned, "why would you do that?"

"Because if I'm serious about it then it just makes me feel worse, so I thought I might try making a joke." She looked over to where the carriages were starting to roll up the pathway towards them. "Is that okay?"

"It happened to you, I think you can do what you like," Lisa stood and stretched. "You know what? I think I'm ready to go home. I hope next year is a lot happier than this one."

Sally stood as well, "me too."

Lily stayed where she was on the dirt, taking in as much of the castle as she could. "I think I could just stay here until after summer," she said.

"Absolutely not," Lisa pulled her to her feet and they linked arms, Sally and Lisa dragging their friend down to where the carriages were waiting at the gate, "you are absolutely not staying here while Sally and I have a great time at my house."

"No," Sally agreed, "and I'm not going to Spain without you, so you'd better put that in your calendar."

"Do I actually have any choice in this?" Lily asked, trying to hide a grin.

"Of course not," Lisa said, depositing her by the side of a carriage, "because we're your friends and we're very smart and funny and brilliant and you have to do everything we say."

"Well alright then," Lily clambered into the carriage and smiled down at them, "glad that's settled."

"Absolutely," Lisa followed her in and helped Sally up as well. Before they could close the door Luna Lovegood climbed in as well, and when they stared at her she only smiled back.

"Why are you in our carriage?" Lisa asked eventually.

"I don't know," Luna said dreamily, looking out of the window, "it just felt like an important place to be."

"Uh, why?"

"It just feels like things are happening here."

"Okay," Lisa turned back to Lily, who was giggling in the corner. Sally was grinning as well. "Would you like to join us on the train?"

"I'd love to."

The carriage trundled on past the gates of Hogwarts and on to summer.

**AN:-** I love these girls, and I love these books, and I love these stories, and I love Harry Potter, but I have got nothing left for this story.

When I sat down to plan this I wrote out several key scenes which tied the books together, and Chamber of Secrets was always the barest of the plots. I knew what would happen whenever Lockhart was around, I knew about the bullying, I knew about the beginning. I had no idea about the majority of this book, and I think it shows. The next book will be better, I promise.

You can now follow me on Tumblr. Username: MelasZepheos, Blog Title: C the Guitar Man. I sometimes post stuff about my writing on there, including previews and original fiction writing.

Lily's joke. Part of Lily's plotline was supposed to be her finding a sense of humour, one that is very dry and sarcastic. So she's really trying to do the sort of Blackadder-esque 'let's highlight exactly why this situation doesn't match the cheery description you've just given it' type of humour. Not sure if it worked or not.

Some thanks for this book and the last (in no particular order):

Cassia4u

SapphireBryony

Son of Whitebeard

Emily Mae

Drunk Acorn Bear

Ember Nickel

john86710

AJ Freas

Avid Reader

Enzonia

So many thanks to you for reviewing this story. It always motivates me to come back, knowing that people are waiting for the next chapter, or the next book. I hope I've lived up to your expectations so far, and continue to delight and amaze in the future.

Coming soon:

Hogwarts Retold: Prisoner of Azkaban

Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban prison, Dementors are guarding the doors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and three third year girls are utterly unconcerned by the entire thing! They have Weasley twins to befriend, a bully to face and a whole third year's worth of spells and magic to learn.

Join Lily Moon, Lisa Turpin and Sally-Anne Perks for their third year at Hogwarts, where more madcap adventures await!


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